Hi! Kirk here. Sorry for neglecting the page recently. Thanks to everyone who has attended to the care and feeding of the page in my absence.
A while ago I complained about the lack of an official English translation of the new 5-level warning system:
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/2657253907681358
Well, it seems that a translation is now available, though it is from NHK, not the JMA. I called the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) to say that I really thought they should publish official foreign-language versions of the warning system and received an pleasant, positive response on the phone but they still don’t seem to have published such translations.
I’m writing about this today because level 5 warnings have been issued in the Tokyo area today. A key point about level five is that it’s probably too late to evacuate. In other words, at level five, the risk of attempting to travel to an evacuation center may be too great. So, at level 5 you should probably do what ever you can to be safe without leaving your immediate area: going to a higher level in your building, going to a room away from glass windows that might break easily, building a raft (just kidding ;) ), etc. This NHK article doesn’t make the meaning of level five clear.
There are always lots of foreigners in the Tokyo area and there are even more there now because of the Rugby World Cup. I’m concerned that, as a country, Japan has not done a very good job of getting the word out about this potentially life-saving warning system. If people are familiar with the meaning of the levels (particularly levels 4 and 5), they can understand the basic idea when they see the warning on a TV screen, even if the program is in Japanese.
It might be too late at this point, but if you have a friend who is currently in an affected area and may not know about the warning levels, please share this post with her or him. Even if it is too late for this disaster, getting the word out about this warning system may help people when the next disaster happens.
