Bousai no hi (Disaster Preparedness Day)

September 1 is disaster preparedness day in Japan. Most governmental organizations and schools will hold a disaster drill around this time. This is also a good time to check your own disaster preparedness kit for completeness and expiration dates, as well as check how your work/study place is prepared. Do you know the nearest emergency exit?

At GRIPS I saw that the lounge on the fifth floor, which is the floor that also has most of the student desks, has a large amount of helmets in boxes. Unfortunately this means the helmets cannot be used during an emergency, as students would first have to go to the lounge, unpack the helmets, and fit them, before being able to protect their heads. If you get a helmet, keep it under your desk and make sure beforehand to adjust the straps so that it fits your head when you need it. If there is a major earthquake, you are likely to want immediate protection, not after 3-5 minutes.

While being under-prepared helmet wise, GRIPS does have warning signs on top of lockers to minimize  the amount of items that might fall on your head (now it is only these cardboard warning signs).

The Aeon supermarket was also promoting disaster preparedness and selling goods for survival packages at home.

In other news, the mame-shiba are now informing people about water pipes in the subways.