As you try to understand what life might be like in Japan right now, keep those untouched liquor bottles in mind. Disasters strip human nature to its essence, but they also reveal the ways that cultures differ. In the face of triple tragedy — quake, tsunami, nuclear threat — too many commentators seem to assume everyone reacts to adversity with the impatience of us average Americans.

Headlines like “Panic in Tokyo” do a resilient people a major disservice. Obviously a large swath of Japan is facing problems whose depth and breadth seem insurmountable. Clearly people are agitated and afraid. And it’s of course dangerous to generalize about any culture.

But read the online comments that follow news reports of panic. People in Japan are outraged to hear the atmosphere described this way. They’re not seeing panic on the streets. Just as we did in ’95, they’re seeing calm residents resolutely doing their best to get on with life. And no doubt they’re hearing, over and over, the two phrases we heard so often in Kobe: Ganbatte kudasai and shikata ga nai.

Shikata ga nai — “it cannot be helped” — can be the scourge of foreigners working in Japan. The key that’s opened your classroom door every morning suddenly doesn’t work today? Shikata ga nai, says the maintenance man. And the American voice in your head screams, “It can be helped! Fix the lock!”

Ganbatte kudasai, a call to persevere or endure, cuts both ways, too. Interpreted as “hang in there,” it sounds a note of encouragement when you’re facing a challenge. But when you’re asking for a change in policy that would help you do your job, Ganbatte kudasai sounds a lot like “Suck it up” or “Shut up and deal.”

It took an earthquake to show us that neither of these Japanese expressions is heartless or advocates curling yourself into a ball. Rather, they’re a reminder to focus on the big picture: surviving, preserving social order, handling the unavoidable with dignity and grace. What had seemed like fatalistic shirking now seemed, in the cold post-jishin light, like enlightened calm and acceptance.

A lot was wrong about the way Japanese officials handled the Kobe earthquake. They accepted little outside help and were wildly suspicious of the people and even rescue dogs they did let in. Middle managers of utility companies, afraid to overstep their bounds when the boss couldn’t be reached, failed to make decisions that could have saved lives. Commercial buildings were rebuilt much more quickly than housing. Information that citizens desperately needed was hard to come by, while self-serving P.R. and formal apologies abounded.

But to our surprise, much that had seemed forbidding about Japanese culture proved its worth in the crisis. Those famously patriarchal corporations that demand their employees’ unquestioning loyalty and every waking hour of their time? In a city with no tradition of volunteerism, they were the most reliable source of help.

As mudslides began rumbling and disease spread and normal utilities showed no signs of resuming, bedraggled people streamed out of Kobe. Streaming in against this tide were corporate squadrons in matching track suits. They fanned out across the city, checking the welfare of fellow company employees and bringing survival supplies.

Even we, the temporary teachers, benefited from this caretaking. The crossing guard who’d greeted us each morning on our walk to school called to see if we were OK. Three days after the quake, a knock on our apartment door revealed none other than the director of our university, carrying water and a portable one-burner gas stove. We already had just such a stove because one of our students had appeared at our door with it the day before. This, too, was a revelation: The students who had held us sensei at a respectful arm’s length, the neighbors who had avoided us so they wouldn’t have to try speaking English — suddenly they were everywhere, knocking at the door to translate the announcements blaring from passing vans and to make sure we knew where food was being offered.

Dave and I stuck it out a few more days. Then a friend suggested — with what, for a Japanese person, qualified as alarming directness — that because we weren’t doctors or engineers, and our kindergarten-level Japanese and lack of a car kept us from helping in other ways, perhaps we could be most useful by advancing our travel plans and taking off, leaving our apartment for others to use until we returned for second semester.

We gave her the key, shoved some clothes into backpacks, and set out at 6 a.m. in torrential rain to hitchhike the six miles to the nearest working train station. We’d walked maybe a mile when a cab pulled out of the line of crawling traffic and offered to drive us. Drenched, dirty and feeling guilty that our escape was not more harrowing, we got in.

Outside the train station nearly an hour later, we waited for the bad news of what the driver would charge for the almost unimaginable privilege of this ride. The driver looked puzzled; why weren’t we pulling out our wallets? He pointed to the number on the meter, about $50. That’s what the meter said, so that’s what we owed him. Rules are rules. 

Dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant forced Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors Tuesday after an explosion and a fire dramatically escalated the crisis spawned by a deadly tsunami.

In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from four reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima state, one of the hardest-hit in Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 10,000 people, plunged millions into misery and pummeled the world’s third-largest economy.

Though Kan and other officials urged calm, Tuesday’s developments fueled a growing panic in Japan and around the world amid widespread uncertainty over what would happen next. In the worst case scenario, the reactor’s core would completely melt down, a disaster that could spew large amounts of radioactity into the atmosphere.

The radiation fears added to the catastrophe that has been unfolding in Japan, where at least 10,000 people are believed to have been killed and mllions of people have spent four nights with little food, water or heating in near-freezing temperatures as they dealt with the loss of homes and loved ones.

Asia’s richest country hasn’t seen such hardship since World War II. The stock market plunged for a second day and a spate of panic buying saw stores running out of necessities, raising government fears that hoarding may hurt the delivery of emergency food aid to those who really need it.

In a rare bit of good news, rescuers found a 70-year-old woman alive in her swept-away home four days after the tsunami flattened much of Japan’s northeastern coast.

After Tuesday’s fire and separate explosion at two reactors in the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, officials just south of the area reported up to 100 times the normal levels of radiation, Kyodo News agency reported. While those figures are worrying if there is prolonged exposure, they are far from fatal.

Tokyo reported slightly elevated radiation levels, but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) away. Closer to the stricken nuclear complex, the streets in the coastal city of Soma were empty as the few residents who remained there heeded the government’s warning to stay indoors.

Kan and other officials warned there is danger of more leaks and told people living within 19 miles (30 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to stay indoors to avoid exposure that could make people sick.

“Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told residents in the danger zone.

“These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that,” he said.

Weather forecasts for Fukushima were for snow and wind from the northeast Tuesday evening, blowing southwest toward Tokyo, then shifting and blowing west out to sea. That’s important because it shows which direction a possible nuclear cloud might blow.

The nuclear crisis is the worst Japan has faced since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It is also the first time that such a grave nuclear threat has been raised in the world since a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded in 1986.

Some 70,000 people had already been evacuated from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius from the Dai-ichi complex. About 140,000 remain in the new warning zone.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that Japanese officials told it that the reactor fire was in the storage pond — a pool where used nuclear fuel is kept cool — and that “radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere.”

Workers were desperately trying to stabilize three reactors at the power plant that exploded in the wake of Friday’s quake and tsunami, after losing their ability to cool down and releasing some radiation. Since the quake, engineers have been injecting seawater into the reactors as a last-ditch coolant.

A fourth reactor that had been shut down before the quake caught fire Tuesday and more radiation was released, Edano said.

The fire was put out. Even though the fourth reactor was shut down, the fire there was believed to be the source of the elevated radiation.

“It is likely that the level of radiation increased sharply due to a fire at Unit 4,” Edano said. “Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower.”

He said another reactor whose containment building exploded Monday had not contributed greatly to the increased radiation. Edano said that reactor, and another, Unit 3, had stabilized but the status of Unit 2 was unclear.

Temperatures in two other reactors, units 5 and 6, were slightly elevated, Edano said.

“The power for cooling is not working well and the temperature is gradually rising, so it is necessary to control it,” he said.

Officials said 50 workers, all of them wearing protective radiation gear, were still trying to pump water into the reactors to cool them. They say 800 other staff were evacuated. The fires and explosions at the reactors have injured 15 workers and military personnel and exposed up to 190 people to elevated radiation.

In Tokyo, slightly higher-than-normal radiation levels were detected Tuesday but officials insisted there are no health dangers.

“The amount is extremely small, and it does not raise health concerns. It will not affect us,” Takayuki Fujiki, a Tokyo government official said.

Kyodo reported that radiation levels nine times higher than normal were briefly detected in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo and that the Tokyo metropolitan government said it had detected a small amount of radioactive materials in the air.

Edano said the radiation readings had fallen significantly by the evening.

Japanese government officials are being rightly cautious, said Donald Olander, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at University of California at Berkeley. He believed even the heavily elevated levels of radiation around Dai-ichi are “not a health hazard.” But without knowing specific dose levels, he said it was hard to make judgments.

“Right now it’s worse than Three Mile Island,” Olander said. But it’s nowhere near the levels released during Chernobyl.

On Three Mile Island, the radiation leak was held inside the containment shell — thick concrete armor around the reactor. The Chernobyl reactor had no shell and was also operational when the disaster struck. The Japanese reactors automatically shut down when the quake hit and are encased in containment shells.

Olander said encasing the reactors in a concrete sarcophagus — the last-ditch effort done in Chernobyl — is far too premature. Operators need to wait until they cool more, or risk making the situation even worse.

The death toll from last week’s earthquake and tsunami jumped Tuesday as police confirmed the number killed had topped 2,700, though that grim news was overshadowed by a deepening nuclear crisis. Officials have said previously that at least 10,000 people may have died in Miyagi province alone.

Millions of people spent a fourth night with little food, water or heating in near-freezing temperatures as they dealt with the loss of homes and loved ones. Asia’s richest country hasn’t seen such hardship since World War II.

With snow and freezing temperatures forecast for the next several days, shelters were gathering firewood to burn for heat, stacking it under tarps and tables.

Though Japanese officials have refused to speculate on the death toll, Indonesian geologist Hery Harjono, who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami, said it would be “a miracle really if it turns out to be less than 10,000″ dead.

The 2004 tsunami killed 230,000 people — of which only 184,000 bodies were found.

Rescuers were heartened Tuesday to find one survivor. Osaka fire department spokesman Yuko Kotani says a 70-year-old woman was found inside her house that was washed away by the tsunami in northeastern Japan’s Iwate prefecture. The rescuers from Osaka, in western Japan, were sent to the area for disaster relief.

Kotani said the woman was conscious but suffering from hypothermia and is being treated at a hospital. She would not give the woman’s name.

The impact of the earthquake and tsunami dragged down stock markets. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plunged for a second day Tuesday, nose-diving more than 10 percent to close at 8,605.15 while the broader Topix lost more than 8 percent.

To lessen the damage, Japan’s central bank made two cash injections totaling 8 trillion yen ($98 billion) Tuesday into the money markets after pumping in $184 billion on Monday.

Initial estimates put repair costs in the tens of billions of dollars, costs that would likely add to a massive public debt that, at 200 percent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialized nations.

Yuta Tadano, a 20-year-old pump technician at the Fukushima plant, said he was in the complex when quake hit.

“It was terrible. The desks were thrown around and the tables too. The walls started to crumble around us and there was dust everywhere. The roof began to collapse.

“We got outside and confirmed everyone was safe . Then we got out of there. We had no time to be tested for radioactive exposure. I still haven’t been tested,” Tadano told The Associated Press at an evacuation center.

“I worry a lot about fallout. If we could see it we could escape, but we can’t,” said Tadano, cradling his 4-month-old baby, Shoma.

The Dai-ichi plant is the most severely affected of three nuclear complexes that were declared emergencies after suffering damage in Friday’s quake and tsunami, raising questions about the safety of such plants in coastal areas near fault lines and adding to global jitters over the industry.

Yuasa reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

– Dai-ichi Unit 2: Ability to cool unit has been lost. Officials say fuel rods have been fully exposed, at least twice. An attempt to channel seawater into the reactor failed due to stuck rod, so officials were trying to spray cool water on the top of the reactor vessel. Explosion occurred early Tuesday at this reactor. Partial fuel melt believed to have already occurred.

– Dai-ichi Unit 3: Hydrogen explosion on Monday. Radiation believed released. Officials using seawater to cool the unit. Partial meltdown also has occurred.

– Daini units 1, 2 and 4: Retained offsite power, but operators were experiencing equipment failures and increased pressure inside the containment vessels. There have been problems with residual heat removal systems.

– Onagawa units 1, 2 and 3: Officials have said they’d detected higher-than-permitted radiation levels. When the levels fell, they said the radiation could have been from a release at the Dai-ichi units.

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SOURCE:

Official government and industry statements in Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency.