More than two weeks after a massive earthquake of 9 magnitude triggered a horrendous tsunami and crippling damage to a major nuclear plant, it is as if Japan is still sleeping through a raging nightmare.
The devastated area is a wasteland, with swathes of towns and villages destroyed and the debris swept and scattered miles inland. It is humbling to witness the fortitude of victims, some with harrowing tales of their own narrow escape and the numbing death of loved ones. They sit patiently in inadequate temporary shelters with precious few amenities that would allow them to dare to hope their shattered lives would be rebuilt.
More than 100,000 Self-Defence Force troops are at full stretch working on relief and helping brave workers try to cool down and bring under control the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.
Although better news has come from the Fukushima plant, which again has electricity, restoring full control over the nuclear reactors is still proving elusive. Discovery of increasing radiation levels in tap water as far away as Tokyo and of contaminated vegetables unsafe for consumption have come with assurances that, for the first time in recent Japanese history, the government is being as honest as it can with the facts.
Ordinary Tokyo citizens are nervously stocking up. Ultra-careful foreign governments are banning all exports from Japan of food and vegetables. Radiation has been picked up as far away as Iceland, in minute traces, say the experts, of no worry to human health, but the weather forecast predicts a reversal of the winds to blow radiation inland instead of out to sea as has been happening.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan is clearly proving not to be the man with the plan that will put Japan on its feet again, let alone remedy both specific and general deficiencies in the way the country is organised. Kan and his team are still in pristinely laundered jump-suit mode, ready to spring into action to help but staying safely in Tokyo.