Preparing for emergencies, day by day.

Recently a friend's guesthouse on Ishigaki Island, where our family also stayed, was damaged by a typhoon. It hurt to hear, and it made me brace myself: it could be us tomorrow.

Running a guesthouse by the sea, I think about how to act in a disaster. There is a large shopping complex nearby, and many older people live in the area. If residents, shoppers and travellers all evacuate at once, I worry about crowded roads and shelters.

This area is said to have some time before a tsunami would arrive, but traffic jams on National Route 2 are expected, and I want to allow for evacuation taking time.

Lately in the UK, too, households are being encouraged to keep supplies to get through three days. Not only typhoons and earthquakes, but what if a system failure cut off electricity, communications and payments? With scenes like that in mind, I think every day about how to protect the guesthouse and my family.

As one step, I built "Disaster Information Terminal | BOUSAI INDEX," which gives access to official information from municipalities across Japan. It works on smartphones and supports multiple languages.

Where you live or where you travel, please use it as a starting point to find the information you need.