“Bousai no hi” means Disaster Prevention Day in Japan
Disaster prevention day in Japan is September 1st.
The reason why September 1st is disaster prevention day has some reasons.
・The day the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred was September 1st, 1923.
・September 1 is the 210th day after Risshun (Chinese lunisolar calendars) and it’s said that in this season there are plenty of typhoons.
Earthquakes, heavy rains, typhoons…we don’t know when we have these natural disasters!
It might be today or 1 month from now.
So getting ready for that is very important.
Some municipalities hold evacuation drills on September 1st.
Before the disaster prevention day, we ordered a survival kit for 72 hours recently.
There’s a lot of different type of survival kits, but we ordered a kit which contains mostly food!
This time, I’d like to show all the items in this particular box.
Please note that not all survival kits are the same. Depending on which brand and where you get your survival kits, it may contain different items than those shown below. This is just an example.
This is the box of the survival kit for 72 hours!
In it, there is food for up to 3 days
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On the box, there’s some guidance about disaster message calls and disaster message boards.
Now let’s take a look at the items separately!
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Portable toilet
It has 10 portable toilets!
One of the most important items.
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Disinfecting wipes
5-year preservable retort disinfecting wipes.
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Cold protection sheet
Cold protection, wind protection sheet.
This is good to prevent hypothermia!
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Water
5-year preservable retort water!
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Emergency rice
3 different types of freeze-dried rice!
Curry, stir-fried rice, takikomigohan taste.
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Emergency side dish
There are side dishes, like:
Hamburg, Nikujaga, simmered mackerel with miso.
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Emergency bread
Emergency bread has three different tastes.
Chocolate, blueberry, maple syrup.
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Emergency cookie
The survival kit has cookies as well!
Macha, chocolate, plain taste.
Check your survival kit on Disaster Prevention Day
I think checking your survival kit on disaster prevention day is a good opportunity.
In Japan, we have a saying 災害は忘れたころにやってくる（saigai ha wasuretakoroni yattekuru） that translated into English would be like “Natural disasters occur when you forget about them”.
So let’s prepare!
When the survival kit and most of its food items are approaching their expiration date, I start preparing a new set of survival food kits. I also start eating survival foods that are almost expired from the older kit, and this is one of my favorite moments because it makes me happy to know that at least for the moment nothing bad has happened.