Should I stay or go, that is the question

Exodus of foreigners is in stark contrast to the stoic resignation of the millions of Japanese, writes David McNeill

IT IS some measure of the extraordinary events of the past week that part of the daily conversation among millions of people in Tokyo today is: How much radiation is bad for you?

Few have any real idea, but most naturally fear the worst

after half a century of cover-ups, lies and bad science-fiction movies.

At present most experts agree that while contamination in the greater Tokyo area is elevated, few suggest it is truly harmful to human health – at least not yet.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano sought to calm fears this week with his widely disbelieved claim that even life within the 20km zone around the increasingly irradiated

Fukushima complex is not that dangerous. “If someone were to stay in the area for 24 hours a day, 356 days a year, they might suffer health problems,” he said.

“But the radiation is not high enough to affect the human body over several hours or even days.” Edano knows only as much about radiation as the scientists from Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the Fukushima plant,

tell him during their daily briefings.

He is not, however, the only one who believes the media is scaremongering. One expert yesterday said that elevated

Tokyo radioactivity is about one tenth of the dose absorbed

during a return flight to New York, and between one-hundredth and one-thousandth of the dose from a typical chest X-ray.

Whatever the truth, thousands of foreigners have already made up their minds in this debate, putting their families on trains to the west or south of the country, or on planes to Asia, Europe or America. Many have quietly taken holidays from work, slipping out the door unnoticed and running for the airport.

Even those who believe, perhaps foolishly, that Tokyo’s

air is still harmless and that the crisis in Fukushima will be resolved, have succumbed to relentless, sometimes hysterical pressure from relatives back home.

At state broadcaster NHK, where I work a couple of shifts a week, ex-pats have been peeling off to Okinawa, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Hawaii, leaving the station short-staffed.

One friend said his family had cobbled together more than over $6,000 for him to buy a flight back to France. Like many

ex-pats he is married to a Japanese citizen and cannot persuade her to leave.

The exodus of foreigners is in stark contrast to the stoic resignation of the millions of Japanese around them. Despite the supposed threat of nuclear Armageddon, black-suited salarymen can be seen going to work every day as usual. Housewives calmly queue for bread, water and petrol around the city.

Many foreign commentators have already noted this admirable and mysterious Japanese

ability to keep functioning normally as the scenery collapses around them, though it can sometimes reach comical proportions.

Yesterday when it felt like the four horsemen of the apocalypse might come riding through Shinjuku station at any moment, our jangled nerves were rattled

by another earthquake, more rumours of a spike in radiation

and the news that efforts

to cool Fukushima reactors

were failing.

In the midst of fielding demands for more copy, interviews and requests by my family that I get home fast,

came a call from the young woman at my local video rental store reminding me in the politest Japanese that I had forgotten to return a DVD borrowed before the world shifted on its axis last Friday.

It was surreal but oddly reassuring that someone is worrying about fines for overdue movies even as the world goes to hell in a hand-basket.