I heard the news on the radio this morning, that power outages had hit parts of central Tokyo. According to updates, about two-thirds of a million buildings were hit, and some people were stuck in elevators in Shinjuku. About 260 traffic lights went dark, and some train lines (notably the Hibiya and Ginza subway lines) were stopped for a while. This all happened around eight o’clock in the morning. However, since this is the O-bon holiday season, a lot of people were out of Tokyo, so traffic was light and disruptions were minimal.

A few points of significance to those unfamiliar with Japan: the O-bon holiday is one of three major annual holiday seasons in Japan (the others are Golden Week from the end of April though the first week of May, and New Year’s, typically the first three days of January). Typically, you don’t want to travel much during those times, because everyone else is. In Japan, people don’t get so much time off, so when the three big holiday seasons hit, everybody makes for the door. The O-bon holidays are a time for Japanese to visit their hometowns, and pay respect to relatives and ancestors who’ve passed away. The peak time is August 13-15, but this holiday break is the least stringently assigned, and can come a little earlier or later for some people.

My other point: the reason why a simple power outage is significant is that it almost never happens in Japan. Back in the U.S., I remember power outages were a fairly common thing–we’d be hit by one every once in a while. In California a few years back, this was magnified by the whole power “shortage” and associated scandals, but even in good years, they’d happen with fair frequency. I never thought too much about them, but in the 90’s, a Japanese classmate at SFSU commented on our having so many, and it caused me to realize that in the seven or eight years I had spent in Japan by that time, I had never been in a power blackout, nor had I heard of one. I’ve commented on this before, but it does seem an interesting question. I thought fewer trees and newer infrastructure were probably causes, and Roy suggested the idea of smaller power grids. I have heard of one grid affecting others and how usage in one part of the country could cause trouble in another part.

For today’s outage, one thing it probably was not was overload. The weather is relatively cool, and a lot of people are simply out of town.

Update: Now we know why. A construction crane being transported on a boat going up the Old Edo River between Tokyo and Chiba apparently hit and took down some power lines there.