While I was in Tokyo for two weeks in the middle of July there were two natural disasters that kept us on our feet.

Man-Yi

The first was the landfall of Typhoon Man-Yi which struck the island of Okinawa then made it’s way up the east coast of Japan to Tokyo. At it’s peak it was a category 4 Typhoon that left surprisingly as far as I can find only around 9 dead and in many reports less then 150 missing at any given time. I am not sure what the final numbers were since I can not find a summary report.

Chu-Etso-Oki

The second was 2 days later as the Chu-Etso-Oki Earthquake struck the northwest part of Japan with a 6.6 magnitude shock with aftershocks 5 hours later. The total damage cause by the earthquake can be read in this report.

In Summary:

1. The first known case of a fire in a nuclear power plant resulting from an earthquake

2. A water leak led to the release into the sea of 2,432,432 pCi worth of radioactive water

Damage that in perspective is very little and very safe in comparison to oil refinery explosions or any number of other power plant failures.

Summary

All in all even with the geological & meteorological activity it was a quiet and peaceful stay. I expected (due to the time of year we visited) that there would be a large amount of rainfall and in that I was not surprised. We never left without the need of a umbrella which in Tokyo was extremely cheep due to competition. Everywhere we went there were hundreds of umbrellas, and seemingly the style of choice for most Tokyo residents is a absolutely clear plastic umbrella?

The only complaint that I really had was that we spent two weeks in the “land of the rising sun” and never clearly saw the round ball of fire in the sky. That and the fact that the Mega-City of Tokyo goes through enough plastic umbrella slip-on-bags to fill a landfill seemingly each and every day. My brother was the first to comment how sick he was of wasting bag after bag each time we went into a retail store since it seemed to be expected etiquette. Commenting that in America people would freak over this much trashed plastic and we can get by without getting people or objects soaked with our umbrellas?