Midori no Hi

さしぶり Nick,

I'm closing in on my sixth load of laundry this weekend. Granted, in addition to washing all of the sheets you used, I decided to wash and store my duvet covers and comforters for the summer. Then again, four of those loads were certainly of the clothing variety.


Normally this wouldn't have been a remarkable story

¹ Well, normally that would be because I would really only do two loads of laundry instead of six.

¹, except that I received this ominous text early Saturday afternoon:

"We might be out of water soon. They found some poison or something."

Luckily, at that time, I was already well out of the house, having to teach an adult class in Kashiwanoha (柏の葉). Well, technically at that point I had headed out to Kashiwanoha for an early lunch and to do some shopping at LaLaPort. But that also allowed me some time to kick up some Google-dust about the issue, in between chapters of Mockingjay.

It turned out that two or three water processing plants in Chiba and Saitama and Gunma (the prefectures just north of us) discovered elevated levels of formaldehyde in the Tone River. According to one of the guys in my class, he postulated that the chemical chlorination process bonded with a pollutant from a factory up-river, producing elevated levels of formaldehyde down stream that are too high to be dealt with by mere activated-carbon treatments.

So, until the source of the contamination could be discovered (and stemmed) and levels be curbed, processing would be halted.

It wasn't more than an hour after that announcement was made than the McDonalds that I had eaten at had closed up for the day

² No お水: no おビッグマック.

² and the FamilyMart across the way had sold out of bottled water.

This left me in a lurch. I very well could have gone home to wait it out: maybe bought something microwavable at 7-11 to eat for dinner and just avoid using the toilet in my apartment… or just plan not to flush. Rather, I decided to stick around some of the malls, banking on the fact that if they were going to stay open it would be because they all have ready access to a secondary water supply.

Little known fact--well, little known to me--is that most of these new malls are built on sites called "Smart Cities." Smart Cities are built with a number of environmental issues in mind

³ Among which are Energy Optimization and Environmentally Friendly Urban Development.

³, but the most impressive of which is their eye on Emergency Sustenance.

One of Kashiwanoha's charter principles is its commitment to being a fully self-sufficient campus in the case of an emergency. The town produces its own energy, grows its own food and manages its own artesian well in the event that there is a catastrophe that severely limits any assistance from prefectural or federal governments.

Anyway, I ended up staying around Kashiwanoha and Ootakanomori for the remainder of the day, eating dinner, walking around the mall shopping for "CoolBiz" dress shirts, and even considering taking in a movie

⁴ Until I saw that they were really only showing things like "Family Tree" (The Descendants), "Terumae-Romae," and "Space Brothers," none of which were "The Avengers" or "Hunger Games."

⁴. I got home a little earlier than I would have hoped, only to hear an overly complicated set of instructions being blasted over the Municipal Public Address system:

[17:40] 北千葉浄水場では，午後 5時30分に江戸川からの取水を再開しました。柏市では午後11時前後には復旧できる見通しとなりました。なお，本日の応急給水については，水道が復旧するまで行います。

More or less, I assumed that this was talking about our water, either being reinstated or forestalled.

But, in no time (and after a little more googling), the water was back on and my dirty laundry was not the worse for wear.

It left me wondering how I would fare in the advent of an emergency, whether it was something as mildly inconvenient as "no water" for as many as two or three days, or something more drastic like "no Pepsi, all Coke," and whether I would make it to LaLaPort on foot. So I took the opportunity to check and replenish the emergency-preparedness bags and water bottles that Geoff and Mickie had installed around the house.


Oh, and sorry for not writing for the past few weeks

⁵ Nee, month.

⁵. I'll get around to those stories sooner than later. I promise. I have a "tickler" folder seven entries deep. I just haven't figured out how to work them into interesting-enough stories. Sorry. But it's time to get back to reading: Hunger Game of Thrones. A Katniss always pays her debts…