March 15, 2011
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The following is a translation of the Henshu Techo column from The Yomiuri Shimbun's March 15 issue.
* * *
A feint is a movement in boxing and other sports to throw off an opponent's timing and mislead him or her. For instance, if you prepare for an expected punch, your opponent won't hit you. But he or she will make contact if you don't expect what is coming.
Many of you might have been thrown off balance by a feint by Tokyo Electric Power Co. I'm talking about the first day of the company's planned outage in the form of rotating blackouts by region. Based on the outage plan announced on the previous night, I braced myself for a blackout. On the morning of the very day, however, TEPCO changed its explanations a few times. First, it announced, "We won't carry out the planned outage," but later it said, "Maybe we will."
The power company said confusion arose because their estimate for electricity supply and demand went wrong thanks to railway companies that responded to the company's call to save power by reducing the number of trains in service. However, the confusion could have been avoided if TEPCO had made sufficient arrangements with the railway companies in advance.
If you need to keep watching television until the last moment to tell whether you will lose power or not, the outage is not worthy of being called "planned." We wish that TEPCO's silly feint hadn't lacerated our nerves any further, which have been already battered by watching grim news footage of quake-hit areas every day.
If you consider disaster victims living in evacuation centers, who lost their homes and don't know whether their kin are safe or not, the inconvenience caused by a blackout for several hours a day is a punch you can roll with. Most of the public will absorb such a blow calmly. What is essential is for TEPCO and the government to handle blackouts with more adeptness.
(Mar. 21, 2011)
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The following is a translation of the Henshu Techo column from The Yomiuri Shimbun's March 15 issue.
* * *
A feint is a movement in boxing and other sports to throw off an opponent's timing and mislead him or her. For instance, if you prepare for an expected punch, your opponent won't hit you. But he or she will make contact if you don't expect what is coming.
Many of you might have been thrown off balance by a feint by Tokyo Electric Power Co. I'm talking about the first day of the company's planned outage in the form of rotating blackouts by region. Based on the outage plan announced on the previous night, I braced myself for a blackout. On the morning of the very day, however, TEPCO changed its explanations a few times. First, it announced, "We won't carry out the planned outage," but later it said, "Maybe we will."
The power company said confusion arose because their estimate for electricity supply and demand went wrong thanks to railway companies that responded to the company's call to save power by reducing the number of trains in service. However, the confusion could have been avoided if TEPCO had made sufficient arrangements with the railway companies in advance.
If you need to keep watching television until the last moment to tell whether you will lose power or not, the outage is not worthy of being called "planned." We wish that TEPCO's silly feint hadn't lacerated our nerves any further, which have been already battered by watching grim news footage of quake-hit areas every day.
If you consider disaster victims living in evacuation centers, who lost their homes and don't know whether their kin are safe or not, the inconvenience caused by a blackout for several hours a day is a punch you can roll with. Most of the public will absorb such a blow calmly. What is essential is for TEPCO and the government to handle blackouts with more adeptness.
(Mar. 21, 2011)
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