Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear reactors....

forgive my disrespect when I say that Japan currently looks like a beloved game of sim city. I'm just waiting for that pixilated image of Godzilla to go traipsing across the screen leaving a trail of fires and explosions in his wake.

It is just that surreal.

The level of devastation that has wracked the northeastern coast of Honshu is phenomenal. The loss of life is beyond comprehension for a little Aussie girl who has never encountered such a disaster on Australian shores.

So why on earth are we still considering going?
The reasons are many and varied.

All reports indicate that the areas we intend to visit are safe and have had little to no disruption at all. As we are visiting areas south of Tokyo we'll be at least 700km away from the tsunami and 600km away from the reactors - That's around the same distance as Wodonga to Sydney. It would be like not going to Port McQuarie in the weeks after the Brisbane floods.

EXCEPT for the first 5 days. In those first 5 days we're intending to stay in Tokyo. Right now, with 12 sleeps to go, everyone we speak to on the ground in central Tokyo is alive, well and functioning with little disruption. The rolling blackouts are not affecting areas that we will be visiting. The decrease in train frequency doesn't mean we'll be stranded, in fact all reports indicate it's still much more efficient than any Australian transport system working at maximum capacity. (again in the areas we are visiting - obviously there are some areas that are completely off line)

So if in the next week things get worse, the power plant implodes sending a plume of radioactive dust across Tokyo for example, we will simply change our flight to come into Osaka. It will be a great opportunity to add back in all those extras on our itinerary that we had to delete due to time constraints. And it means that we will have to go back to Japan again. A horrible shame of course!

So in our minds we have it all sorted. But the constant barrage of news, opinion pieces, uninformed gossip, and just 'unknown facts' is really taking it's toll.

I hope we're doing the right thing. It feels like we're doing the right thing. But we just won't know until we get there.

I promise posts from here on will not be so depressing and sombre.