Dear friends,
This week will be a different type of post from usual. Instead of talking about tourism in Japan, I want to quickly update you on what I’ve been up to. In Pakistan.
First of all, I would like to apologize for not posting last week. I was on a special mission in Pakistan for my work (in TV journalism which is my day job) and was extremely busy with the preparations.
I want to clarify that this work mission is not related to what I do for Japanese tourism — I am supervising a filming team from Japan, and our objective is to raise funds to support children in Pakistan. We are covering the current situation of children in the rural areas of Sindh Province and broadcasting their stories, appealing to the Japanese audience for support.
Attached is a photo that depicts the current situation. It has been almost a year since the devastating flooding caused by monsoon rains, which resulted in one-third of the country being submerged in water.
Right now, cyclone "Biparjoy" is approaching the southeast of Pakistan. Pakistan's infrastructure is highly vulnerable to disasters, and a powerful cyclone like this is expected to cause significant damage upon its arrival. Let's hope that the country doesn't suffer further destruction.
In Japan, we also have a rainy season (usually from June to July) and face several typhoons per year which can sometimes cause severe floods. Even though they are the same tropical cyclones, the impact of typhoons on Japan is different from the situation in Pakistan. In recent years, the number of typhoons that have made landfall on or strongly impacted the Japanese archipelago has been increasing due to rising sea temperatures over the Pacific Ocean.
On the other hand, in the case of Pakistan, cyclones that originate in the Indian Ocean tend to change their course toward India and Bangladesh due to winds from the Arabian Peninsula. In any case, it is undeniable that the threat of tropical cyclones is increasing for both countries.
I hope this gives you a glimpse of what I am currently involved in right now. This trip has made me think a lot about natural disasters and how they can affect our livelihood and about infrastructure, and support in case of these events. During my stay in Pakistan, I was reminded of the overwhelming lack of disaster information in the majority of households, especially in rural areas, where there is not even a television set. The most urgent issue is how to provide disaster information to the people who are helpless in the face of strong winds and heavy rain.
Traveling outside of Japan has allowed me to reflect more on natural disasters happening in and outside of Japan. Let me know if you would like to know more about it in future posts.
Once I return to Japan, I will resume my weekly posts and share some of my experiences from Pakistan. Please take care and see you soon.
Thanks for this update. I would love to hear more from you about environmental issues such as disaster preparation, because every country has such different ways of handling them. And in some cases like Pakistan, there isn’t adequate infrastructure for the kind of disaster that we are seeing more and more of. I am very interested in how Japan handles floods in particular, for reasons of my own, so please include this on your list of future newsletter ideas.