Fukushima supermarket: "We are selling all products at discounted prices and losing money"

[somone]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/amid-catastrophe-japan-fights-mayhem-with-order/2011/03/14/ABNa88U_story.html

Japanese finding more tsunami victims; survivors face deprivation
By Chico Harlan

...With no power or running water and limited supplies of food, many Japanese are going hungry, thirsty and cold as they cope with near-freezing temperatures along the northeastern coast, where many communites have been wiped out and others remain hard to reach. “People are surviving on little food and water,” said Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture. “Things are simply not coming.” He said deliveries of food and other supplies were meeting just 10 percent of the people’s needs and that body bags were in short supply, with local crematoriums overwhelmed. The rescue and recovery efforts were hampered by continuing aftershocks, which raised fears of new tidal waves...

At a school in Sendai being used as a shelter for the homeless or stranded, hundreds waited for water at an outdoor playground by forming a double-file queue — one that followed the winding chalk lines drawn up by shelter workers. One Fukushima City supermarket was set to open on Monday at 10 a.m. The first customers showed up at 7. Soon, several hundred were waiting to buy rice, instant noodles and other goods. The store manager, Hidenori Chonan, said the store didn’t have many supplies left — and electricity had already cut out. “We don’t know when the next supply would come,” Chonan said. “We are selling all products at and losing money. But at a time like this we help each other.” “We have security to avoid confusion, but there is no sign of people trying to break into our store, or anything like that,” Chonan said. “Of course some complain about lining up or having limits on how much they can buy, but we all know what the situation is and we all feel each other’s pain.”

Indeed, while Japan in recent days has lost much of its infrastructure and refined lifestyle — and far too many of its people — the country has retained its decorum. The island nation has responded to a pileup of catastrophes in a way that reflects both its peculiarities and strengths. There’s a ferryboat sitting atop a house in the tsunami-ravaged town of Otsuchi. But at shelters across the country, shoes are neatly removed at the entrance and the trash is sorted by recycling type.

In the 72 hours since the earthquake and tsunami, relief workers and a global television audience are marveling at Japan’s stoicism, its ability to fight once-in-a-century mayhem with order... Twitter users retold stories of where the stranded and homeless shared rice balls. Travelers heading north reported 10-hour car rides — with no honking. At a convenience store in one battered coastal prefecture, a store manager turned to a private electrical generator. When the generator stopped working and the cash register could no longer open, customers who had been waiting in line quietly returned their items to the shelves...

[d_r]

1. Japanese culture

I'm no expert. I spent a few weeks there. Every time I thought I had figured out something about Japanese culture something would come along and blow that theory. Lines have a different concept. IMHO, it isn't only the "Japanese favor group harmony over individual autonomy" thing, but also just being used to living in a crowded lifestyle, if that makes sense. I know its a stereotype and a cliche.

[Blue Meany]

2. True, but it is just as crowded in China, and they don't line up at

all; they just crowd and push their way forward. The two cultures are very different, but I don't think it has to do with crowded living.

[d_r]

3. no, it isn't just crowded living

what I am trying to say is something like "experience in crowds." Knowing how lines work, that sort of thing. Understanding the unspoken social rules of how to behave in a crowd.

[speltwon]

5. True, just because it's a stereotype doesn't mean it's not GENERALLY true

The Japanese are more conformist, more ordered, and are used to confined spaces, crowding, and expected to have higher degree of decorum in such situations than many othe cultures. They are a very law abiding, rule abiding culture, as their crime rates, etc. show pretty clearly. They have a cohesiveness that we certainly don't (as a nation that stresses individuality). That's both good and bad. Like everything else in society and law, it's all about tradeoffs.

We also have a culture where the individual striking out on the frontier (untamed wild west) is a big part of our mythos.

[gratuitous]

4. "But at a time like this we help each other"

Profiteering: Ur doin it wrong.

Somewhere, Libertarians and other Ayn Rand devotees are shedding bitter tears. Barbara Bush is clutching her pearls and heading for the fainting couch (and no, that's not what the kids are calling it these days). A caption writer is frustrated that he can't write about the difference between some displaced persons "finding" stuff while others of darker skin tones are "looting" stuff. And someone accustomed to crowing about American exceptionalism is busy trying to avoid these reports.