Japan

     I have been in Tokyo 6 times that I can remember, 4 times just passing through and once for a day which was about as long as I cared to stay.  I lived in the Far East for a year and didn't like it one bit.  I called Seoul home during that period and Tokyo was only an hour away by air and that was the place to pick up electronic equipment from the manufacturer at ridiculously low prices.  The yen at that time was something like 315 to the dollar so the buying power was huge.  Just don't buy anything else but electronics.  Everything else was astronomical in price.
    One time, I was flying back from San Francisco with a stop in Honolulu, Tokyo, then into Kimpo International is Seoul.  I was flying Northwest Orient, now defunct, which was the premier carrier for the Pacific rim countries.  We landed in Tokyo a little late and would be unable to clear Japanese airspace by midnight so the airline put all 350 or so of us up at a 5 star hotel and gave us a 20 dollar certificate for breakfast at the hotel resturant before flying out at 9 the next morning.  The hotel was in the heart of downtown and the first thing I noticed was that they stuck lightbulbs on everything.  Vegas wasn't that well lit. Lights on buses..buildings..And the corporate headquarters..Panasonic put up a brightly illuminated sign and Pioneer had to have a bigger one..Sony had to make theirs bigger than the two..and on and on..
     After checking in and exchanging a few dollars for yen, I went to the nightclub downstairs and listened to a Japanese group sing a song for the visiting Americans, "The Gleen Gleen Glass of Home", which I found to be cute because I had tried to learn Korean and I had much bigger problems than substituting "L"'s for "R"'s.  The 1 drink I had (I asked for a whiskey sour..not sure what I got) was the equivalent of 6 bucks in 1972 dollars.  One way to keep me sober.
     The next morning was miserable.  It was cold and rainy.  But I would be able to use the 20 dollar chit to have a big breakfast.  What 20 bucks got me was an egg and coffee.  And bad coffee at that.
     My final memory of Japan was landing in Yakota, to fuel our Flying Tigers stretch DC-8 for the 17 hour flight back home.  We were all called off the plane and ushered to the tarmac where everybody's baggage was stacked in a pile.  Somebody was bringing home contraband so we had to gather our luggage and go through customs to have our baggage checked.  Sure enough, some Air Force guy stationed at the Air base had tried to smuggle some exotic plant out of the country.  For a planeload of servicemembers wanting to go home, the guy was lucky we didn't kick him off at 40,000 feet.
     To be sure, my experiences in Japan were few. The culture and mindset of the Japanese were completely foreign.  Japan is still a relatively closed society and that brings us to the current situation in the country.
     We all watched in horror as the earthquake and tsunami wiped away homes and people.  And then the worldwide panic of what happens when a nuclear reactor melts down.  The odds of that happening anywhere else in the world is minuscule but sadly, our best chance at clean energy may be stalled if not abandoned altogether.  The final act of the play hasn't begun yet.  Rebuilding will be a massive and expensive ordeal that will take years to finish.  Haiti was a different situation.  They had no infrastructure to begin with.  It's doubtful that those who survived on the northeast coast will rebuild in the same spot.  Even if the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant  is fixed, the ground around it will be radioactive virtually forever.  If the chart I'm reading is correct, U-238, the most common form of Uranium, has a half-life of over 4 BILLION years.  U-234 is less-ONLY 250,000 years.  There's a reason nobody lives near Chernobyl anymore.
     But on the bright side, if any people on earth can rebuild from the devastation, it's the Japanese.  They have the pride and strength as a people, and if at all possible, they will do it themselves, with as little outside help as possible.  The cost will be somewhere between 300 billion to a half a trillion dollars.  And that too they will pay with as little outside help as is needed.  With Americans, especially those in California, if the San Andreas let loose, they'd say to hell with it and move to Kansas.  I know I would.