I went to a nearby supermarket to verify the articles in newspapers reporting that people living in Tokyo metropolitan area are hurrying to supermarkets to buy bottled water. Well, that was true. On the shelves for bottled drinks I could not see even a bottle of water. However there were considerably sufficient bottles of non-alcoholic drinks, green tea, juices, colas, etc.
Walking through the aisles, I also noticed two other very important daily food items were missing on the shelves. One was "yogurt", the other was "natto".
If you do not know what natto is, please refer to the following site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D
I have no idea why on earth yogurt was out of stock. However, lack of natto is easy to explain. Natto is a food item traditionally eaten in the Kanto (the district containing Tokyo) and the Tohoku (the district that has suffered from the triple disaster). In the western part of Japan, there was no custom of eating natto until quite recently.
Therefore, naturally, the centers of natto production find themselves in the Tohoku district and they have suffered. To my pleasure, I got a piece of good news today: major produces of natto in Mito and other cities are now trying hard to bring their production lines back to normal, and they are almost there. In a few days, I hope, I will be able to eat natto again. What encouraging news!
Try hard to get back to normal. This is what all Japanese want now. And I am sure in many places of the Tohoku, people are trying hard to get back to normal.
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| [empty natto shelves] |
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| [empty yogurt shelves] |
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