It is a very cold day, March 22, You could see up here there's some power lines and I thought that this would be a very interesting place to come because we are in the middle of something very, very challenging here in Tokyo Tepco, which is the Tokyo Electric power company.

Um, most famous for the 2011 Great Tokyo earthquake, the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima since that earthquake about 10 years, over 10 years ago.

Now we've been having power supply issues uh for a long time and the earthquake that happened last week has had an impact on the power coming in to Tokyo.

Now you can see I'm near a dark building here.

You can see it's actually snowing here in Tokyo.

It's like a mix of snow and rain and it's a cold day.

You can see my breath is out here which is weird because I had shorts on just a couple of days ago, which is very weird.

Right?

But because it's such a cold frigid weird day, power consumption is up way, way higher than normal, at least for the last seven days.

So there was an issue of this before like right after the earthquake happened, a lot of the reactors went offline.

But because the weather is noticeably colder, my my fingers are almost kind of numb.

Hold a second.

Is there no audio really no audio.

There should be audio.

Yeah, because because the cold, this cold weather is here Power consumption is up last night.

I got a message from Tepco asking to reduce power consumption and keep heat no higher than 20°C which Is actually enough.

I don't think you need to be higher than that but a lot of people have it at 24°C, can I like to keep it nice and warm.

Um but they asked us to reduce the, the heat and if to reduce power consumption in our own house, I don't think in the history of Japan we'd ever been like had a warning like this before, at least that's what the news is reporting here.

We also have some other issues that are going on in in Tokyo as a result of the earthquake and like it wasn't that strong here in Tokyo but the repercussions of what happened up there in in Tohoku really impacts this area.

So I got a news report here, I printed it out.

This is a Tepco asks users to save power after quake.

It's also a link in the description here, you can check it out because historically I think this is sort of a big deal.

Um so they asked, starting on friday night which was last week to um make sure that the power shortages in that they were going to be possible power shortages.

Let's walk down this, this old alley here Power shortages and they said as of nine p.m. Demand had reached 98% of the power supply capacity through the margin needs to be kept at or above 3% in order to ensure stable power.

So we're at like like 100 and a lot of these houses here And there's about seven million households in met in the central of Tokyo.

I don't think it's a bad signal on my end.

I checked the upload speed And it was 22 MB/s in this area.

So I don't know what why the signal would be weak here.

You can see the power lines and these older buildings are are connecting into it as long as well as the telephone lines which are not as useful but there's a light right there on that building and you can see it's connected by the power.

So these are older buildings.

I like this area of Tokyo because you can see the old and the new and the older buildings, it's much more obvious to see the power lines.

Even in a modern city like Tokyo we have old buildings like this.

So we're at 100% and as a result if it goes any higher they're going to have to just shut off power to houses.

So that means hundreds of thousands of houses could be without power in the city of Tokyo today and for the next couple of days so I don't want to I don't want to lose power.

So if you are living in the Tokyo area please conserve power because it is a it's a team effort here.

I feel bad for Tepco because actually I don't that as much but sort of because I know it's really tough.

Power shortages may trigger large scale outages.

Tepco requested users to reduce their electrical consumption between nine PM and 10 PM, which is apparently when people use the most amount of power they come home from work or it's the coldest right before bed and they turn on the power um they're also watching lots more tv, they've got to elect the washing and drying machines on.

So to reduce power between nine and 10 PM company asked for cooperation to save power for the first time Since January 10 of last year, which was uh you know, because of the pandemic, a lot of people were at home on a very cold day.

They just didn't have enough power.

Now the reason why there's not enough powers is stems all the way back to 10, 11 years ago when a lot of the fossil-fuel power plants went offline as well as the nuclear power plants went offline and it just, there's not enough supply for the demand of power Here in the city of Tokyo, which is, which is odd.

Right?

You think they would have solved this 10 years on but they haven't yet.

So what what is Tokyo doing Tokyo is going to be borrowing power from I think let's see here, Hokkaido power Chubu power, Hokuriku Electric company chugoku electric company, Kyushu electric company are all supplying power to talk to Tepco.

This is sort of embarrassing I think.

Right, so you would think thank you for the warm tea.

I'm gonna see if I can stop at a vending machine here to stay warm.

You think that the Tepco would have sort of found ways to, Oh, that's pretty interesting.

Check this out.

These are like little motor scooters that you can rent that are battery powered.

We're gonna check this out in a second.

Speaking of power but it's pretty embarrassing.

I think the Tepco cannot get enough power to the customers following an earthquake and not be able to have backup.

This also happened up there and this is an issue.

The Tohoku Shinkansen services suspended between Nasa Xiomara and Morioka through by a derailment here, which I think they're going to have off the tracks by the end of the end of next week And but the line is down until April 20 their reporting and there's a link in the description for more news articles, you can see the rain is kind of this color and this print out but it's a very sad image to see the Tokushima constant derailed, their safety features in the Shinkansen.

So it's not something that you need to worry too much about um when a massive earthquake does happen.

Ah there's p waves which are initial waves and I felt it actually last about five days ago when we had this big earthquake, I could feel the p waves in Tokyo.

So I kind of had an idea there was an earthquake coming.

Um The p waves are like a really light like shaking that sometimes goes unnoticed because it's so light the but the JR East takes that into account and starts to slow down all shinkansen when any kind of waves are felt, the shinkansen automatically starts to slow down.

So when the big shock hit, the shinkansen was able to get to um was able to stop much faster as a result of the safety features which probably saved a lot of lives because this derailment looks really bad and it could have been a lot worse if that train had been going much faster speed again.

The faster it goes.

I think it's just it's such a much more dangerous situation.

Of course there are only light injuries as a result of this shinkansen derailment which is a real testament to the safety that JR East puts into um the trains here now that that's gonna keep the rails um on the Tohoku shinkansen Shut down until April 20.

I'm actually really cold and I'm speaking faster because my fingers are numb.

I didn't expect I didn't expect snow to be falling either.

So that's kind of bad news.

So it's going to be harder to get up to Tohoku, it's easier to fly now and rent a car than it is because there's no train, no fast way to get up there.

I don't know about the local lines.

I just haven't, I talked with anybody who's traveled up there, I was gonna go to Tokyo station to do this but I figured it's really cold.

Just find a neighborhood that's that's nearby that has power lines.

Hopefully this power shortage is fixed by tomorrow and the reason why it's fixed, we've got warmer weather coming in in 24 hours.

So with the warmer weather, people turn off the heat, they open the windows, they use less power and that's what we're all hoping for for the next 24 hours.

So Tepco is really trying hard to get through this These 24 hours until tomorrow, Even 12 hours now.

Um when people go to bed, the power consumption goes down as well.

Any questions I know that because Japan is one of one of the countries on the ring of fire.

We're going to have massive earthquake, earthquake sometimes.

But it's just to be worrying that 10 years after 10 years since the last big earthquake, Tokyo Power and like electric and power company still doesn't have enough power for situations like this to make sure that consumers can heat their homes.

It's weird right?

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Do you know that the power is mixed in Tokyo nuclear, solar wind burning trash.

Um a lot of the, so right now the east, so go power power plant in Yokohama is shut down.

That's also part of the problem.

It's an I believe that's a fossil fuel plant.

It's right outside of the city of Yokohama.

And I was looking at their website, it was really funny.

They actually had a power festival at the East So Go Power Company in 2019 and on the, on the brochure it looked like people were having a lot of fun at the power company.

The power rangers were on the brochure.

So it makes me wonder if Japan's power is powered by the power rangers which would be very interesting.

Um this, it's a mix of all different kinds of things because it's a cloudy day here in Tokyo.

The news is also reporting that solar power, which is another another diversified power alternative that that Tepco has incorporated is is much lower as a result of the clouds and the snow.

So like it seems to be like the perfect storm for power consumption.

I'm looking at this tree right here and this is also a testament of, of the, the chill and my worry here.

You can see the cherry blossoms are just a day away from blooming.

Do you see this?

It's so close and there's some cold rain on them and I'm glad that they didn't bloom yet because if they had this rain might have washed it away.

We're very close to to the cherry blossoms opening this so many Yoshino blossoms all over the city of Tokyo look at that.

So Hopefully tomorrow sunshine is going to be enough to open up those blossoms and we're gonna have a wonderful day for the next 48 hours.

We're just waiting for the weather to warm up.

I'm like I got cherry blossom fever but today it's hard to feel because even my fingers are numb because it's so cold.

We have something called san can Sheehan, which is this weird spring weather before the warm weather breaks and we get good enough weather where we can go outside in shorts like I normally do in the end of March, they'll be like like three days hot, three days cold, three days hot, three days cold in this, this cycle of up and down up and down with the temperatures it goes on and it's quite annoying but then it just breaks and then it's warm for the rest until october So right now we're in the middle of that.

This feels like winter right now.

It really feels like winter.

So we're not that far away from these blossoms opening up and bringing us some some spring fever again.

Oh, it's cold van.

Thank you.

Stay safe.

Thanks a lot.

We haven't had any aftershocks here, which is a little bit odd.

I thought we would feel a little bit more following the earthquake a couple of days ago, but it's still possible that this happened and I, I have charged up the batteries and an earthquake pack.

We have a bag by the door in case that strong earthquake hits with water.

Some food, we put in some baby milk for, for Leo and we have some snacks that we eat for a couple of days.

Some rations, we can just grab that.

I have helmets also by the door that we just grab and we can, we can run to a park or an evacuation center if we need to following the earthquake, staying in your house is okay too.

But there's gas line, there's gas all around and there's a, there's possible um, I know dangers when the in the streets, things falling from buildings and whatnot.

So it's, it's, it's certainly, you know, a good idea to stay inside during the earthquake and then to evacuate.

Um, if there's structural damages around, especially after a strong one to a place that is safe because you just don't know.

Um, so that's the situation here.

Hopefully we can get through these 24 hours and we don't have a power shortage or power outages because that would wreck havoc.

It would get even colder.

We'd lose the things in the refrigerator.

We don't want any of that.

And even, and even in 10 years after the Great Tohoku earthquake, we're still experiencing these kinds of shortages.

So a lot of Tokyo Heights are kind of upset.

The Kanto region is the only one really suffering.

Tohoku is getting power I believe from Hokkaido power which is able to power all moody and some of the other places should the shortages get really bad.

So they're, they're okay up in Tohoku.

Uh, there might be some places that still have some power outages because there they were hit a lot harder than we were down in Tokyo.

But Tokyo, which is power hungry has the biggest problems with power consumption because there's 44,043 million people in the Kanto area which encompasses Tokyo chiba, Tochigi, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa.

So that this region of of Of Japan is just so densely populated.

We just suck up power so much were the ones that are suffering the most and hopefully Tepco which is still kind of reeling from the 2011 earthquakes and the meltdown down up in Fukushima which powered a lot of the Kanto region can figure out how to diversify enough that we don't have these problems in the future.

There's a link in the description if you want to take a look at the article about the power power supply warnings that were getting but it's just really weird in Tokyo that we have power supply warnings five days after an earthquake just showing you that it's time.

Maybe Tepco should upgrade a little bit, I don't know or every house should have a solar panel and get off the grid maybe who knows, but right now we are, we are slightly worried about it.

Angel, thank you.

It's nice to see you here?

Thanks for joining me tomorrow.

Um Peter and I are going to a hamburger place live streaming.

So you're not gonna wanna miss this one?

Probably around 2:30 p.m. Which is a little bit late for those on the east coast of the United States.

But a new burger chain has come into Tokyo and they invited me to the press conference which is weird.

And I was just thinking you know, all right, you know what, I don't mind live streaming this because I got a lot of questions like is there space in japan for more burger chains?