50 percent of luminance

Everyday life has become stressful since the moment when everything was shaken and displaced 5 days ago on the 11th of March.

The pace of the cosmopolitan life was hampered but is trying to resume slowly, but the busy landscape of Tokyo has been inevitably silenced since then. On the morning of the 12th, after a night's horror, I woke up to a bright but quiet Saturday. The day was seemingly as peaceful as any other Saturday, but the soundlessness was unusually uneasy and agitating. The rhythm of routine in the house was greatly altered and interrupted by the 24-hour update of TV news about the devastating earthquake and its aftermath disasters. The flow of life was halted and stopped in front of an unending stream of news updates and a string of more and more heart-breaking images.

Due to the crisis in the nuclear plants in Fukushima and the shortage of electricity supply in the eastern part of Japan, Tokyo metropolitan has started a planned power-cut since yesterday. To be of any help, we have been trying to economize every degree of power. Therefore, whenever lighting is needed in the house, we would tune the light down to a degree that is supposed to be more environmentally friendly. 50 percent of luminance.

Thus in such partial brightness we watch news, cook, eat and feel an ever-aggravating sense of worry about the disasters.

Over these days, I have been thinking how we have persuaded ourselves in the first place to create such a gigantic bomb, nuclear plant, to worry ourselves at this point. Many questions have been asked whether such a monstrous electricity-generating machine is really necessary to keep the body of economy working. And it seems that most of the time, the answer is negative. Is it merely a cheaper and therefore convenient option into which short-sighted politicians and business vultures ensnare the public?

If 50 percent of luminance is manageable to live a life, if 50 percent of energy can be saved when more attention is paid to details, if 50 percent of efforts can be made to develop a cleaner and safer energy, we would probably be better free from this current state of great anxiety about the threat that the power plants have posed to lives.