Just to let you know: rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. My silence has only to do with the fact that I worked fairly late last night, and went to sleep shortly after getting "home," and nothing to do with the radiation scare.
Yes, I've heard the BBC stories about the radiation scare (happened to turn on BBC World News last night for the noise value last night, and got my dose of sensationalism for the year). It was news to me, ten hours after the fact. They were talking about "radiation levels four thousand times 'normal' levels," [rebuttal coming shortly... keep breathing] but they never bothered to say if N*4000 was a dangerous level. I view it kind of like saying that the desert had 4,000 times the normal amount of humidity... "what does that mean?" It sounded like they were really enjoying the sensational aspects, so I just turned it off and decided to wait for the morning paper.
I've now retrieved the paper from my door, and it says that the radiation "hit levels seven to ten times greater than normal soon after the accident," but adds that "the amount posed no danger to the neighborhood. The officials said that radiation levels had returned to normal by 12:30PM," some 7 hours ago. I realize it's been a while since I was in school, but I didn't realize 7-10 was so close to 4,000. Maybe it's just me....
Anyway, an area within 1,000 yards of the plant was evacuated, and (I don't know what the following means either) "cordoned off an area in a 3-kilometer [2 mile] radius of the plant." This occurred in Ibaraki Perfecture, which is about 100 miles north of Tokyo, which is several miles north of my location (Chiba Perfecture).
OK... let's see - what else is interesting? Oh. I heard this the other day. This is second hand (as most news items are), but it speaks volumes about the culture here.... A local company was under financial stress recently, and the CEO was asked if he was going to lay anyone off. He said, "No, it's not the workers' fault, it's mine. I will take a pay cut and the workers will continue as they were." Or words to that effect.