Japan: operating as a journalist in the quakezone

Many have asked about how the working day happens here in the quake zone – so here goes.

The first thing to say is that this morning we are heading north because the Fukushima reactors keep exploding.

Right now there’s more Capt Mainwaring and Corporal Jones in the air than radiation. Panic’s rarely helpful – if ever – but caution’s rarely anything but helpful. Just trying to sort one from the other as we head north.

We’d been in an hotel in Sendai where phones and electricity function as well as the most complex electro-loo seat I’ve ever seen.

Like most places, Sendai has as much earthquake damage as Henley-on-Thames – or so it looks. Until that is, you reach the Tsunami area. Then all the usual debris and mayhem unfolds.

Read more:  Channel 4 News in Japan

Everyday the queues for food and petrol lengthen. One of our drivers is fuel quartermaster whose job it is to source fuel first thing every morning.

We know the most likely garages – but inside the quakezone there’s no power so you have to handcrank it all up – litre by litre – with a device like one of those old-fashioned car-starters.

Our esteemed team of Japanese fixers oscillate between map, radio, mobiles to establish where looks the most likely filming location for the next day.

Watch Alex Thomson’s report from Kesennuma

Being nine hours ahead, we are on air at 4am. Dawn breaks just as we’re packing up the flightcases of kit at our “livespot” a mile or two from the hotel in Sendai.

Then it’s three hours sleep, two or three to a room. Two to a bed in the case of me and one Jon Snow – then up, down to the reception area where we edit most evenings, and a can of freezing cold black coffee for breakfast.

Food is whatever you can grab from the vans – basically pot-noodles, Pringles and a range of Japanese plastic-wrapped bits of dead meat from something once alive.

Two days ago I was handed a banana, which I ate.

Once north of Sendai you are into the quakezone and that means no electricity and no mobile coverage at all. Hence the long period of comms silence from me in terms of blogs, tweets and all the rest of it during any working day.

And after all that you pretty much choose where you want to go and drive there. Journalists can use the motorway network, apparently closed to all but emergency services.

Channel 4 News special report: Japan – tsunami to nuclear crisis

Getting access to the areas wrecked by the tsunamis has not been a problem – it’s pretty clear that the authorities want this story told.

What joy it is being able to wander at will in these areas as a reporter, for once without the familiar jobsworths of Britain intent on stopping you from working on the grounds of that great global cancer: Elfan Safety.

No – the Japanese have more pressing matters.

Hey – I’ve just been handed another banana – time to end this.

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