The post earthquake situation in Tokyo

For the large part, life in Tokyo has largely returned to normal. There are still some noticeable after effects of the earthquake still lingering in the city however. Since the shutdown of the Fukushima reactors, the entire Kanto region (the region surrounding Tokyo) is running at reduced power capacity and the entire region has managed to cut power consumption by at least 25% since the earthquake, alleviating the need for rolling blackouts through the region.

A link to the power charts for the Kanto region is provided here. The blue dotted line represent's last year's power consumption, the small blue bar is the total peak power available and the pinkish line represents yesterday's power consumption and the blue bars represents power consumption for the for the current day.

It's rather fascinating to see how much more power people and companies are able to cut and still maintain fairly "normal" operation. I doubt that you will see this level of power consumption elsewhere in the world however, as the attention to detail and the character to voluntarily reduce consumption is the same with other countries. The above graph could be a representation of the amount of "disposable power" Japan has.

In more detail, office buildings have reduced power to lighting, reduced the number of elevators and escalators operating. The trains have turned off the air conditioning and turned off lights inside the cabins during the days (it gets incredibly dark when going through short tunnels and really shaded regions). I expect power consumption to slowly rise as industrial regions will slowly rise as companies start brining more equipment and facilities online.

We have yet to determine if the power shortages will continue through the summer as one additional power plant is scheduled (since before the earthquake) to be taken offline for inspection through the summer, possibly bringing back the blackouts. There have been talks through the news that this might be not necessary as we have been seeing unprecedented levels of power conservation.

Supermarkets are currently short on food products as the shelves for certain products are either empty or only half full; coupling that with the current dim lightning resulting from power conservation, it presents a rather dreary atmosphere. The supermarkets are short on certain vegetables, milk, soy bean products and bottled water (which were quickly snapped up because of fears of water contamination).

The schedule for the current project that I am working on is being pushed back by about 6 months (and we are really rushing it at this rate). I expect that much production in Japan be significantly reduced and research delayed. Since the currency jump after the earthquake, I have decided to move some of my funds out of yen and into other currencies as I expect the yen to weaken throughout the year. Already in less than a month, the yen has dropped significantly.

I expect the earthquake will send slow shockwaves throughout many technology companies throughout the world as Japan produces many high tech components in many electronic devices. This might be an opportunity for other emerging market players to pick up the slack for reduced production from Japan. Right now, this probably is a very big opportunity for other Asian countries like Korea and China to play technological catch up with Japan. I expect competition to be fierce once Japan gets back on its feet.