Zen and the Art of Planning

A bit of informal sociology : In a society which exists on detailed planning and organization, how do the people survive when a number of unprecedented events take place in a short period of time?

In a nutshell, this is kind of what's happening in Eastern Japan right now, and it's leaving a lot of people scrambling. Typically the goalposts don't move a whole lot here, and not without prior prediction and more contingency planning, the details of which can fill thick binders as each communication is meticulously filed to provide a complete roadmap as to how critical points were arrived at, and the resulting decisions. In the last week, though, Japan has suffered not just one but two catastrophic events, with a third-- the nuclear plant which supplies power to the Kanto and Tohoku regions suffering from various events to 4 of the reactors.

While I have written about the various hiccups we've had with planned power outages (keikakuteiden; 'keikaku' means plan, and 'teiden' can translate as electricity stoppage) in the Kanto region, it was announced last night that Tohoku Teiden would also move to rolling outages. I didn't realize that the Fukushima plant also supplies power to that region. However, their shifts will be a bit rigorous, as it is still winter in that region and 3 hours is a long time to be without heat. If you don't believe this, ask some of the people staying in the emergency shelters who have been without electricity, kerosene, adequate blankets, or food/water for days.
http://www.tohoku-epco.co.jp/

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110316a5.html

Everyone is continuing to do their best in these times as the news continues to deliver more news regarding the health of our power supply. Businesses and private citizens are actively practicing setsuden (power conservation)-- in my area, many businesses have gone to half lighting, and escalators have been shut off. Elevators are also not being used, not just out of setsuden but in case of teiden. Yesterday I stepped into the local electronics store and the scene was a preview of post-apocalyptic Japan-- the shop was half lighted, with the escalators and elevators shut off. The usually continual loud and overly cheerful announcements announcing the various services and products had ceased, with the only sound on the second floor coming from the one television tuned to NHK and the disaster. Computers were all switched off, and entire aisles were blocked because the shop suffered some decorative glass breakage from the Friday quake that was still being cleared up. Even for it being noon on a weekday, the shop was almost empty except for myself, 3 other shoppers, and around 20 sales staff-- who, out of pure lack of anything to do, were standing in groups, nervously conversing but appearing overly hopeful that one of us would require assistance of some sort just to break the monotony of waiting.
(Ha ha... I thought about inventing some request and saying 'excuse me' in Japanese just to see how many would run over, but the atmosphere is still so tense here...)

The Toden people are understandably under a lot of pressure-- this morning I caught a live press conference, and the representative speaking was having a very hard time maintaining the decorum-required polite Japanese, and had resorted to handwriting on maps with a red pen while explaining the situation. For people who have experience working with Japanese companies, they know that usually there will be professionally-printed graphic board which were scrutinized and checked at least 3 times by 12 different people, and even as the representative is speaking there are usually juniors standing by with binder upon binder filled with data. Obviously the current situation means they've gone to Plan B, and going to Plan B is not normal in Japan.

After I started writing this post, the New York Times published an article similar to what I was going to write. Time constraints and lack of verbal eloquence on my part dictates that I allow them to take over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16japan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig