Apr 7

WIT Life #160: 電気予報

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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.

The title of this post is not a misprint; I purposely typed 電気予報 (denki yohou or electricity report), not 天気予報 (tenki yohou, or weather report).  According to this morning’s news, in order to deal with the expected uptick in electricity usage during the summer months, there is a proposal being floated around of providing electricity news via TV and radio periodically throughout the day.  The purpose is twofold: to try and decrease mandatory blackouts and increase awareness of energy conservation.  These reports would include forecasts of supply and demand in specific areas, as well as directions regarding usage.  This is an interesting concept, and certainly not foreign for a country whose news regularly provides reports on pollen levels (花粉情報, kafun jouhou) during allergy season and the degree of sakura blooming in various locations (桜前線, sakura zensen, literally “cherry blossom front”).

The following is an excerpt from a mass mail my former high school Japanese teacher sent out to some of her former students indicating the situation on the ground in Tokyo, particularly in regard to electricity:   “Due to power and fuel shortages up north that are expected to last throughout next year, there are scheduled 3-hour blackout periods in various parts of this region and we’re doing all we can to reduce electricity usage. Escalators are turned off, a minimum of elevators are running, stores have reduced their hours, air-conditioners have been shut off and movie theaters are voluntarily closed. The famous Tokyo nightscape of lit skyscrapers and neon signs has been dimmed. The government plans to re-introduce daylight saving time, last used after WW2 when Japan was under US occupation. Small comforts that we used to enjoy like automatic hand dryers, toilet seat warmers, clothes dryers, humidifiers/air purifiers/aroma diffusers and other electrical gadgets seem so trivial now. We’re thankful to just have the basic necessities.”