::::::: y a n o s h ... in ... winterwonderland :::::::

last night, after more than 40 hours travelling i arrived back home in sweden. fortunately everything worked without problem - no luggage lost, no transfer missed (i had to re-check-in twice. for a sane price i could only book piecewise flights...). when i got home i had another mail from the swedish embassy urging people to leave tokyo area and people who are staying to derive and take iodine pills (was not clear, whether this only for people within a certain area around fukushima, or all people in tokyo area...). yasuko on the other hand sounded fairly collected - she's back at her home in downtown tokyo. contradicting signals - it continues to be hard to judge, where is the truth and what is the proper way to act in the current and lasting situtation.

i'm just sitting at the gate of my hongkong flight at kansai airport (hej, they have free wifi!), boarding is starting. so there i good chances that i will be out of japan in about 1 hour.
yasuko will go back to tokyo today. at least that were the recent plans before we parted at kyoto station. she was fairly worried and, accodring to my feeling, indeed felt a little left alone. :-( i hope she will be fine and hope that tepco gets the reactors under control soon. at least today's news sound promising. i had a short talk with some friends of us who live northwest of ustunomiya. we haven't heard from them before after the earthquake. and i was reliefed, that they are fine, too. though he, who is a pottery artist, was a little depressed since his pottery oven has been broken by the quake. i also had some short words with yasuko's mom (well, she doesn't speak too much english, i don't speak japanese. so telephone conversations are really, really short) and promised to come back for new year as planned before. i'm looking forward and cross my fingers that japan will be on the up by then again.
ok, time for boarding. see you soon again, japan!

if everything goes as (re)planned, i will leave japan (for this time. i really hope i will be able to come back in not too far future. leaving friends in this situation really feels uncomfortable. rats leaving the sinking ship - i am afraid that this is the message i/we give to the japanese) this evening. since we have to check out the hotel during the morning and i will not have access to another internet connection, there will be no further blog entry until i arrived back home in sweden. which will be around 1am monday morning (and maybe then i will rather go to sleep. well, i'll try to put at least a tiny message here, such that all of you can stop holding your breath. at least regarding me. my friends and colleagues here will still need it...).
as you can get from this post - i am fine. but, i have to admit, all this waiting and monitoring the development of the situation and trying to stay reasonable myself and calming down people in europe made me quite tired. please, don't misunderstand me - it's nice to see that people worry about me, it's good to get encouraging mails and calls from you. but it also costs quite some time and nerves to answer them. that's the reason, why there hasn't been posts here during the last 2 days. beside the fact, that there was not too much too report. cause i basically also only get the news you get - i don't speak japanese, hence i am reading/watching german and english news. and, all this up and down and suspense around the reactor issues are waering me out. i stopped watching news thursday afternoon. cause in the end it wouldn't change anything - i am here, i will likely be away sometime soon, the japanese will have to stay and live with it. whether it stays the way it is now, or whether it gets worse.
however, once more (i wrote that several times before, i think) i wanna say that i have great respect for the way the japanese took this stroke of fate, how they stayed calm and quite organized and polite and friendly and unegoistic. i used to struggle with this kind of stoic mentality when i was living here. but i think, in this situation it largely kept the country going and remaining a civilized society.

not too much new things here today. i am fine and more relaxed, now that i have rearranged my schedule returning to europe on saturday/sunday directly from kansai airport (i.e., i don't have to go back to tokyo and narita airport - fortunately i made a clever decision when deciding to bring all my stuff to kyoto instead of leaving my big suitcase at the tokyo institute). western japan inclusive kyoto is doing well - life is largely as normal, except growing numbers of "refugees" from tokyo area filling the hotels. i will stay here and have hotel room until saturday and am optimistic that the situation remains here as is now.
the workshops i was here for are over now (or rather: the remaining parts have finally been canceled). basically i was supposed to return to tokyo today, but the people in tokyo institute were sane enough to allow me to stay in safer kyoto and leave to europe earlier than planned (not that they could really force me to return. but they could have caused quite some trouble to yasuko as the person responsible for me and my actions.). for the next two days, yasuko has organized an office at the university of kyoto from some former colleagues of her for us to work. so i hope, i can finally get some work done again. and now... bed. i need some sleep. the 8 hours time shift with europe is quite exhausting at the moments - all telephone calls with concerned people back in europe are done in the middle of my night... - but, no complaints. it feels good to hear from all of you!

today the events picked up pace and felt situation got rapidly worse. in the evening we met a french couple, friends of yasuko, at our hotel - just by chance. he is working at an agency or company at the french embassy. they were told to leave tokyo and moved to kyoto yesterday. they also reported that tokyo is largely a ghost town these days with shops being plainly empty. later came the information that the situation worsens at fukushima nuclear power plant, becoming very chaotic, removing most of the staff from there since radiation levels are getting high. eventually, when we arrived back to the hotel after dinner and i was sitting in front of the computer i felt some swaying. first i thought, yanosh, you have to go to sleep - you already feel shakings were none are. but yasuko felt the same. short time later the news in tv - earthquake with japanese strenght up to 6+ with center at shizuoka. that's quite close to kyoto compared to the previous ones. calmed me down when i recognized, it's at least still at the edge of the same tectonic plate as all the others. but still, it raises some fear again that this series of earthquakes might trigger the long awaited big tokai earthquake (statistically every 70 years. last one has been 1923 tokyo quake). not exactly comfortable (slight rush of panic)!

beside that, i got news from the travel agency - the airline handling my ticket allows rebookings related to japan issues for people traveling before March 31. but, rebooked flights need to be same booking class as originally booked - which in my case means, the flights would be operated by another airline which doesn't have any seats available before my original return date. great! also an offer for cancel/refund and new booking. but new booking still from tokyo, and that i would really like to avoid by now. (nevertheless big thanks to the travel agent for the efforts made during the last 2days!)

so i spend some time searching for flights from kansai airport myself. also contacting my boss for advise/support/confirmation (thanks!). eventually i now BOOKED FLIGHTS FOR SATURDAY from kansai via hongkong to frankfurt and from there via prague to stockholm, arriving sunday, March 20th, afternoon. so i hope, this will work out and situation in kyoto stays stable until then. it however feels very strange and uncomfortable to know that i will leave friends and colleagues behind, who can not just escape from here...

oh, and, yesterday i received an email from the university surveying (in support of swedish embassy, where i am not really sure they are or will feel responsible for me as german citizen) how many and who of university staff or students are currently in japan. i shortly reported on my being here and soon after received an answer "thanks for reporting. good you are fine. have a safe flight back.". what? what's that? today it got more... well, ridiculous? bold? today a mail came asking whether people affected by the disaster would be willing to answer questions to swedish media. that. and nothing else. no "how are you?", "can we support you?", no offer or advise or support. maybe i am overreacting, but i think these people really have nerves (while mine are currently quite a bit frayed)...

ps. thanks to everybody, who contacted me, for your support, advise, expressing your concerns and wishes!

sorry for no report yesterday - it was not because something bad happened to me, but i was plainly busy preparing my talk for the workshop.
in kyoto the situation is as before - business as usual. kyoto and the west of japan in general has not been affected by earthquake or tsunami or nuclear power plant problems. hard to judge whether production and product supply/distribution to western japan might be affected in future.
i was scheduled to return to tokyo tomorrow. a colleague from the tokyo institute has been here today to give his talk and reported that situation in tokyo is getting thougher - hardly any people at the institute and supply situation getting tight (that's the things - lack of drinking water, food, too a less extend also heating - i am afraid of more than the radioactivity), shops fairly empty. with this situation it doesn't make sense to go back since i will hardly be able to perform the work i was supposed to do (data processing machines largely shut down for the power outages and to save energy; unsure whether my collaborating colleagues will be available). therefore i decided to stay in kyoto at least until the end of the week like several other colleagues (they were actually supposed to participate in another workshop, for which i didn't got permission to go to by tokyo institute. the workshop has however been proposed (correction: postponed, off course), but people being here and with hotels booked still stay here.). i furthermore contacted my travel agency for rebooking and they are doing their best - it's waiting for updated info from the airline, which for the moment is only rebooking people on goodwill base that were scheduled to travel until March 15th (i.e, today). I do not actually see a good reason for that - if it's crisis here, it's crisis regardless of what return date my airplane ticket has. however, that's as it is at the moment. so i hope, some solution can be found until end of this/beginning of next week.