Radiation

Now, as you all know, I am 84Km from Fukushima I Nuclear plant. So we were worried a bit about radiation. Still a little worried. But not as freaked out as the foreign media.
This website:
http://microsievert.net/
Shows a visual of the radiation in various situations and the real time counts from nearby cities. The visualization is basically that if you could see the radiation like it was rain, that's what it would look like.
The top four boxes are from left to right:

World Average     Tokyo-NY flight   Prepare to evacuate level  Must evacuate level

The second row is: (city, prefecture)
Fukushima, Fukushima   Mito Ibaraki,  Utsunomia, Tochigi,   Maebashi, Gunma

Third row:
Saitama, Saitama    Ichihara, Chiba    Shinjuku, Tokyo   Kanagawa

We are somewhere between the Fukushima City and Mito levels.

Two Weeks After The Big One

Well, it has been two weeks since the big quake. Our car has not moved since March 13, but we are well supplied thanks to the internet. About five days ago, the major package delivery companies resumed their routes, so we now have our main staples in stock. The bread machine is set for 6:00AM, and we have a case of canned tomatoes to go with our beans and rice. Maybe not luxury, but feels good.

Tomorrow, we are thinking of taking the car and going into Hitachi for a well deserved break/celebration of the end of Kylie's school year. Hopefully we can get some gasoline there (On Friday morning, there was a 2Km line for gas in Takahagi- and you needed to get a ticket first... Welcome to our Peak Oil simulation!)

The supermarkets are gradually getting better. Every day there seems to be more and more food in them, but still nowhere near the pre-quake levels.

The radiation levels in our area (about 80Km from the plants) have been dropping- keep in mind, they were never into the "dangerous" zone. All the same we have been keeping inside as much as possible of course. Say a prayer for the men who are working to fix the leaks up in Fukushima.

I don't know why, but it seems that every Saturday evening there are larger aftershocks than other days. We had two shindo 4 quakes this evening.

Showa Timeslip in Iwaki- Matsugaoka Park

Last weekend, we accidentally fell backwards in time to the late 1970s/early 1980s. We were coming back from a nice hot spring in Yumoto, Iwaki, and decided to check out a park- Matsugaoka Park (the link is google translated, but the pictures are nice). We parked the car, unloaded the stroller, loaded up the baby, and then carried the stroller up the several thousand stairs to the top of the hill. Not a whole lot of handicap accessibility we thought. Arriving at the top, we found the other parking lot. D'oh!
Then it was back in time. The SkyCycle, boat ride, carousel, and mini train, complete with "Family Rand" on the locomotive. All for 60 yen/ride for kids. Yes, even the prices were from the Showa period!
Great care had been taken to keep all the signs and writing to period- even the newly repainted signs style was a throwback.
Did I mention that there were no people in the park other than ourselves and three park employees? Woo Hoo!! No lines! Here are the highlights-

Who could resist the Family Rand train?

The Sky Cycle entrance. Love that funky 80s font style.

Daughter and wife pedaling like mad.

The nautical theme- complete with Koi and live turtles!