Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The 100th post of my blog could not have come at a more opportune and interesting time. In a tech-savvy Japan suddenly devoid of its extensive cellphone connections in much of the disaster struck areas and other parts of the network jammed by massive volumes of calls, the Internet once again proved itself to be the life-saving technological innovation putting in touch people in Japan with their worried friends and families both inside and outside the country. Yet, the power of the Internet would not have been so important at such times of disaster if its ability to allow for nearly instant social communications and sharing of information was not so well developed and utilized by large numbers of users. SNS, especially Facebook, by breaking down the dangerous anonymous nature of cyber-populace , has allowed us to easily and quickly identify our loved ones affected by the disaster. And then there is the consumer-generated media (CGM). Whether it be a simple status update on Facebook

The crowds of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau was perhaps the most chaotic scene I have witnessed in this otherwise calm and orderly atmosphere after the Quake . Thousands of foreigners, students and professionals alike, rushed to obtain the permits for reentering Japan before heading back their respective native countries. The noises of complaints about slow processing mixed with immigration personnel's unending apologies for inefficiently handling the "unprecedented crowds" (certainly no exaggeration there). Also heard among the crowds were frequent phone calls, those from faraway families checking on the conditions of the receivers of the calls, but more frequently, those in the endless queues for permits confirming their plane tickets back home. In all this noise and crowds, I, for the first time in the past few days, finally felt, physically rather than just mentally , that Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the disaster areas, is really going through something unusual an

"The earthquake made me feel that my life can end at any moment, so I should just enjoy it to the max right now..." These were the spoken words of a colleague as we walked through the streets of our neighborhood, slowly filling back with people after two days of being deserted. Shops are opening back up and some are boldly trying to convey a romantic atmosphere to the passer-by. Yes, the first "holiday" since the quake was in, and people, in their defiance to the power of nature , are going to enjoy it to the fullest. This highly commercialized "holiday" is called White Day, a unique concept only in Japan and Korea when males who received chocolates from females on Valentine's (exactly a month ago) are supposed to give back certain gifts. The extensive social hierarchy means that often (rather, mostly), the gifts on both sides were given as social obligations rather than actual liking, and the social burden is especially on the guys to give back

With emergency meetings still under way in Rakuten , and some missing employees still unaccounted for, the short-term future of the company should surely be in the mind of every employee at the company. But just as it is important for Rakuten to help the employees (and the shop owners) in a top-down fashion , conversely, the employees, at their own individual levels, should be thinking of how best to support their own company through this massive physical and economic calamity.

With the explosion up north at the nuclear plant in Fukushima (which I briefly mentioned in my last post ) confirmed to be one that tore apart the outer layers of the nuclear facility, the public's nerves suddenly made a switch to a potentially more damaging problem, both short- and long-term, of extensive nuclear radiations in the nearby areas. Already, a 20km radius of the affected nuclear plant has been evacuated, leaving the people and the media to worry if actual situation is being hidden from public view and a more devastating second disaster is in waiting. The mental stress from the quake is still building up. More and more are seemed to be feeling "phantom quakes," or acknowledgment of the ground trembling even though no quake has occurred. The vast number of "phantom quakes" and actual aftershocks felt even now has led many to live through a couple of completely sleepless nights. Physical tiredness can surely only make the fragility of the mind mor