TOKYO - Tokyo for eight days was a city scared but waiting for good news. Today is a capital city in agony. It comes as close to collapse and expects the worst. Within hours, the remaining trust has yielded to despair. The slow exodus in recent days has taken on the size of the leak. Over four million people have left the city by train, car or storage.
White-collar workers, foreigners and families with children trying to reach the small town south of Kansai, in order to escape from the danger of the atomic cloud. In the northern suburbs of Tokyo comes the wave instead of desperate people fleeing from Fukushima and cities destroyed by the tsunami.
A precipitate the situation, raising the risk level in the reactors, new tremors and the belief that the government minimizes a crisis out of control. You fire alarm but also the first real-contamination. The government acknowledged that traces of radioactive iodine were found in drinking water of Tokyo and nearby areas.
Abnormal levels, officially under the legal limits and not immediately dangerous to health, but the public impact of the news was terrible. Also radioactive milk from Fukishima lots of spinach and some products in the prefecture of Ibaraki. Already on the market, no one knows where they are finished.
The population of the metropolitan area, over 35 million people, notes that the life of one of the most important capitals of the world has already changed beyond recognition. The question is not when most will return to Tokyo to everyday business and lost, but if it will be possible. The collapse of the traffic and crowds on the street is impressive.
Few passers-by, protected by hats, umbrellas and masks, they ignore the malls of downtown, largely closed. Syndrome contaminated food left deserted restaurants and tenth who had devoted so far to hoard food. In Ginza, the shopping street, some street vendors are auctioned iodine tablets on the sidewalk, at exorbitant prices, as if they were drug dealers.
To steal a single genre: the newspapers that information on the timing of the blackout. For three days the garbage accumulates in the streets. The trucks have no gasoline, electricity can not waste incinerators. Only the Senso-Ji temple, Asakusa, is more crowded than usual. People gather to pray and burn incense.
The packaged foods, as long as products until 11 March, are found and their price has gone up seven times. Unsold fresh genres. Thousands of taxis waiting for customers already stop in the distance as well as rail passengers burst loads of boxes and suitcases. Many gas stations are closed and the open ones do not sell more than ten gallons of gasoline each, to take away in a tank.
The housing market is crazy. Within a week the value of houses in Tokyo fell by 30% and 70% in Fukushima Prefecture. In Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe has risen by 40%. Skyscrapers with thousands of empty offices in the capital, but far exceed the rent lists of Hong Kong. Between Friday and Monday to escape from multinational companies, embassies, banks and administrative centers of industry, has caused panic among those who have no safe place to hide.
In the financial district employees are evicting thousands of cabinets and desks, restoring an image to crack the stock market. The capital moves to Kyoto, as before, or to reach the international airport in Osaka. In Tokyo, the big hotels close to the south it is impossible to find a room for weeks.
The anger against the government is less and less restrained. "They say in advance what might happen - says Reiko Fukushima, director of a chain of shops - not to confess what has already happened. If the atomic cloud invests Tokyo can not require that we cease to breathe." Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked in vain for the opposition center-right to form a directory of national unity, united to face the most serious disaster since the Second World War.
The agony of Tokyo and the specter of a nuclear explosion, the sum is submerged by the tsunami catastrophe in the prefectures. The capital is under siege by thousands of eco-evacuated and tens of thousands of homeless people fled from cold, hunger and terror. Volunteers distribute food, water and blankets.
The crowd of desperate but he need medicine, toilet, beds, to wash and change clothes wet. The entire village of Futunaba near Fukushima, yesterday was moved to Saitanama, just north of Tokyo, causing the rising of the residents. According to the medical emergency sanitation, with 800 000 people for reasons other than forced to abandon their homes and hospitals, is near to explode not only in disaster areas.
The tragic problem of disposing of the tsunami victims, between 25 and 40 000. I have no energy and crematoria coffins go into mass graves. In Japan, the burial is a traumatic news: the latest violence, a nightmare that seems far from over. 
White-collar workers, foreigners and families with children trying to reach the small town south of Kansai, in order to escape from the danger of the atomic cloud. In the northern suburbs of Tokyo comes the wave instead of desperate people fleeing from Fukushima and cities destroyed by the tsunami.
A precipitate the situation, raising the risk level in the reactors, new tremors and the belief that the government minimizes a crisis out of control. You fire alarm but also the first real-contamination. The government acknowledged that traces of radioactive iodine were found in drinking water of Tokyo and nearby areas.
Abnormal levels, officially under the legal limits and not immediately dangerous to health, but the public impact of the news was terrible. Also radioactive milk from Fukishima lots of spinach and some products in the prefecture of Ibaraki. Already on the market, no one knows where they are finished.
The population of the metropolitan area, over 35 million people, notes that the life of one of the most important capitals of the world has already changed beyond recognition. The question is not when most will return to Tokyo to everyday business and lost, but if it will be possible. The collapse of the traffic and crowds on the street is impressive.
Few passers-by, protected by hats, umbrellas and masks, they ignore the malls of downtown, largely closed. Syndrome contaminated food left deserted restaurants and tenth who had devoted so far to hoard food. In Ginza, the shopping street, some street vendors are auctioned iodine tablets on the sidewalk, at exorbitant prices, as if they were drug dealers.
To steal a single genre: the newspapers that information on the timing of the blackout. For three days the garbage accumulates in the streets. The trucks have no gasoline, electricity can not waste incinerators. Only the Senso-Ji temple, Asakusa, is more crowded than usual. People gather to pray and burn incense.
The packaged foods, as long as products until 11 March, are found and their price has gone up seven times. Unsold fresh genres. Thousands of taxis waiting for customers already stop in the distance as well as rail passengers burst loads of boxes and suitcases. Many gas stations are closed and the open ones do not sell more than ten gallons of gasoline each, to take away in a tank.
The housing market is crazy. Within a week the value of houses in Tokyo fell by 30% and 70% in Fukushima Prefecture. In Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe has risen by 40%. Skyscrapers with thousands of empty offices in the capital, but far exceed the rent lists of Hong Kong. Between Friday and Monday to escape from multinational companies, embassies, banks and administrative centers of industry, has caused panic among those who have no safe place to hide.
In the financial district employees are evicting thousands of cabinets and desks, restoring an image to crack the stock market. The capital moves to Kyoto, as before, or to reach the international airport in Osaka. In Tokyo, the big hotels close to the south it is impossible to find a room for weeks.
The anger against the government is less and less restrained. "They say in advance what might happen - says Reiko Fukushima, director of a chain of shops - not to confess what has already happened. If the atomic cloud invests Tokyo can not require that we cease to breathe." Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked in vain for the opposition center-right to form a directory of national unity, united to face the most serious disaster since the Second World War.
The agony of Tokyo and the specter of a nuclear explosion, the sum is submerged by the tsunami catastrophe in the prefectures. The capital is under siege by thousands of eco-evacuated and tens of thousands of homeless people fled from cold, hunger and terror. Volunteers distribute food, water and blankets.
The crowd of desperate but he need medicine, toilet, beds, to wash and change clothes wet. The entire village of Futunaba near Fukushima, yesterday was moved to Saitanama, just north of Tokyo, causing the rising of the residents. According to the medical emergency sanitation, with 800 000 people for reasons other than forced to abandon their homes and hospitals, is near to explode not only in disaster areas.
The tragic problem of disposing of the tsunami victims, between 25 and 40 000. I have no energy and crematoria coffins go into mass graves. In Japan, the burial is a traumatic news: the latest violence, a nightmare that seems far from over.
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