Well, distribution problems continue. Yesterday, gas stations were either closed or had very long lines. Supermarkets have been out of bread products for a few days now, and what comes in quickly goes out. I thought I’d check out the supply in the morning, and found this at about 10:30am:

I could not see inside enough to figure if they had fully restocked or not, but they won’t be for long, I am guessing. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try getting up a bit earlier and get in the (probably much longer) lines to get something. It is currently kind of hard to tell whether this is purely because of supply problems, or if panic buying and hoarding is playing a role. Since I did not get in, I could not see if prices had been jacked up, but they had not been yesterday when the place was nearly sold out.

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I wrote the above this morning, and Sachi and I just got back from opening a bank account at the bank we’re getting a loan from. After going to the bank, we figured we’d check out the food store below Seiyu (owned by Walmart, incidentally). Their fruits & vegetables remained fairly stocked (seems that there are a lot of farms in the area, so no problems there), but milk, eggs, and bread and other bakery goods were cleaned out–along with meat and other items. In short, meat, bread, & dairy–which often come from up north–are predictably in short supply.

In surprisingly good supply: fish. I am guessing that most of the fleet was safely out to sea, and therefore unaffected by the tsunami, so there was lots of tuna and other seafood available. We got to the store at a good time for the bakery–the shop in Seiyu’s basement was baking stuff and putting it out on the fly (ringing a bell each time new stuff came out), so we could get some muffins, a few pastries, and a “milk bread” confection, all fresh out of the over. People were snapping them up as soon as they came out, but when I got there, they had just put out a lot of stuff and almost no one was there.

Prices remain stable, nothing has gone up noticeably.

In the meantime, fast food and other restaurants are still open, for the most part.

We have not had a blackout in our area yet, despite having been told twice that the power would be cut at such-and-such a time. I can only assume that they are planning for the worst and then doing what is necessary. One is due in about half an hour or so. Internet continues to stay on as it has since the quake started.