No more food at supermarkets in Tokyo

The Tokyo Electric Company announced the rolling blackout starting from Monday 14 March. The blackout lasting for 3-6 hours per day at alternating times is planned to take place until the end of April. After the announcement, the consumers rushed into shops to buy batteries and torches, which were soon sold out. Realising the severity of the situation, the consumers started buying up also food to store at home. Basic foods in Japan, e.g. rice, bread, instant noodles, bottled water, or milk disappeared in most supermarket. At the shop I went yesterday, there was no meat nor fish. There is also no toilet roll nor tissue. Normally in Tokyo, we hardly see empty shelves on supermarkets, so the situation makes one worry and buy even more stuff. The government says, however, there is enough supply of goods and food to Tokyo, and asks the consumers not to buy up foods that are more than necessary.

Pandas come to Japan

Giant pandas are perhaps the most popular animal in Japan.
Two giant pandas are coming to Japan from China this evening, and many Japanese are excited about their arrival.

The first two pandas came to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo in 1972 to commemorate the restoration of diplomatic relations between Japan and China. Since then, there was always at least one panda at Ueno Zoo until three years ago when the last panda died.

Giant pandas are rented from China to Tokyo at an incredible cost.  It costs Tokyo about 83 million yen (1 million US dollars) per year to rent the giant pandas to Ueno Zoo. In addition, Ueno Zoo spent 90 million yen (1.1 million US dollars) to reform the panda house. It is fully air conditioned with floor heating in winter and has a big swimming pool. Their special foods cost 18,850 yen (235 US dollars) per day.

All of these are paid, of course, from our tax!

Warm and windy

It wasn't an intention of this blog to record everyday weather in Tokyo, but I haven't been going out much these days and there isn't much happening in my life.

Anyway, it was very windy today. In my old apartment, the windows were constantly making loud noise. It was even hard to walk straight when I went shopping in the evening.

While winds were strong, it was unusually warm during the day. Some of my spring plants started flowering. I think that they made a mistake because the cold weather is focasted to return tomorrow.