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The massive quake and tsunami of Mar.11, followed by a hazardous nuclear crisis have pushed the 21st century country into an unexpected ‘dark age,’ that could hardly be recovered within a year. The crisis has made the lives of people terrible The devastated country has postponed the first pitch of its baseball season, to stop people from wasting gasoline for driving to the games. Night games will also be shifted to daytime to avoid unnecessary electricity consumption, once the game starts. Moreover, there will be no extra innings. The country has been running so critically low on energy that the iconic electronic hoardings in Tokyo have been switched off. In a number of northern Japanese cities, heaps of garbage has been piling up, as the city garbage trucks lack gasoline. The rolling blackout along with the fuel crisis has made the lives of people unbearable. "It is dark enough to be a little scary.... To my generation, it is unthinkable to have a shortage of electricity," said Naoki Takano, a 25-year-old salesman at Tower Records in Shibuya district, Tokyo. Analyzing the situation is really difficult The energy crisis in Japan is mainly a sequel of the power plant explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi, as well as the closing of other nuclear plants possessed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. Both of these have scaled down the supply of electricity to the capital of the country, by almost 30%. An acute shortage of gasoline and heating oil is being observed, as the production has been totally stopped at those severely damaged nine oil refineries. According to the economists, analyzing whether the situation is an outcome of scarcity or a result of electronic billboards is really tough. Takashi Kono, of the policy planning division in the natural resources and fuel department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said, “We are close to getting back to the gasoline capacity we had before the earthquake, but we are hearing demand has been two- to threefold the normal volume. With that much demand, of course we're looking at a shortage." However, 250,000 gallons each of gasoline and diesel has been allotted by the U.S. military for use in the relief operation. For more information check out Nuclear crisis
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