Japan’s 2024
January 1st
Japan has had a bad start to 2024.
What happened on New Year’s Day?
evacuate (verb) = leave a dangerous area
A big earthquake hit Ishikawa on New Years day. There were tsunami warnings so people living by the coast had to evacuate.
Huge cracks appeared in the ground, including roads so highways were closed.
There were power cuts and water outages because pipes and power lines were damaged
Many old buildings collapsed and caught fire. The fire quickly spread to other buildings
What were you doing when you first heard the news?
January 2nd
What happened here?
JAL plane
coast guard plane - deliver aid
379 passengers and crew
While landing at Haneda airport a JAL flight crashed into a coast guard plane that was going to deliver aid to tsunami and earthquake victims in Eastern Japan
The JAL plane caught fire but all passengers and crew were evacuated safely.
How did they get off the plane?
The passengers went out an emergency exit and slid down an inflatable slide.
slide down (verb) a slide (noun)
inflatable (adj) = can be blown up with air
It took 18 minutes to get everyone off the plane. The BBC believes the short time is amazing. Why do you think it was so smooth?
The JAL crew had excellent training
The passengers (who were mostly Japanese) followed instructions and left their belongings behind
Do you think non-Japanese passengers would have acted differently?
When an Emirates plane crash landed and caught fire in Dubai in 2016, many passengers tried to bring their luggage and wasted time.
Luckily no passengers and crew died.
January 3rd
“Woman arrested after slashing 4 men in train at Tokyo's Akihabara station”
On Wednesday night at 22:55 pm a woman in her 20’s stabbed 4 men on a JR line train in their back and arms. She reportedly said she suffers from mental illness and wanted to kill someone.