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Emergency planning

What Japan can teach us about being prepared

Japan emergency preparedness and what it can teach British households about planning ahead, calmly and sensibly.

By Slightly Anxious

21 September 2026 9 minute read

IN SHORT

Preparedness works best when it is ordinary: keep enough of the things you already use, know what you will do, and do not assume help will arrive immediately.

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Japan takes disaster preparedness seriously. But behind the earthquake warnings, evacuation drills and emergency technology is a surprisingly ordinary idea: keep enough of the things you already use, know what you will do and do not assume help will arrive immediately.

Mention Japanese “rolling stock” and you could be forgiven for picturing a bullet train.

In Japanese disaster planning, however, rolling stock means something much less glamorous and much more useful. You buy a little more of the food and household supplies you normally use. You eat the oldest items first. Then you replace them during your usual shopping.

No mysterious silver pouches. No cupboard full of food nobody wants. No expectation that, after a frightening and exhausting day, the family will suddenly develop a taste for dehydrated beef stew.

It is one example of how Japan has made preparedness part of ordinary life. It is also remarkably close to the thinking behind the Slightly Anxious Emergency Guide.

A week, not a weekend

Japan’s official advice generally describes three days of supplies as a minimum and encourages households to aim for a week. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government gives similar advice, depending on the needs and circumstances of the household.

Our view is simpler: plan for seven days.

Three days may be enough for a brief interruption. It may not be enough when damaged infrastructure, inaccessible roads, high demand and overstretched emergency services occur at the same time.

A seven-day plan does not mean expecting civilisation to disappear for a week. It means recognising that life can remain difficult after the most dramatic part of an emergency has passed.

The electricity may be back, but the shops may still be closed. The water may have returned, but the authorities may not yet be confident that it is safe to drink. A road may have reopened, while deliveries remain severely disrupted.

Preparedness is not only about surviving the initial event. It is about managing the awkward days that follow it.

Japan and us, side by side

Japan's minimum: 3 days of supplies, aiming for a week. Ours: plan for 7 days
Japan: about 3 litres of drinking water per person per day. Ours: 10 litres, including washing and cooking
Japan plans for portable toilets: daily visits x people x days
Tokyo asks employers to shelter staff for about 72 hours
Both recommend an out-of-area contact

The food you already eat

Japan’s rolling-stock method is one of the most sensible approaches to emergency food we have encountered.

Instead of creating a separate emergency menu, the household keeps a deeper supply of familiar food. If you regularly eat tinned tomatoes, rice, noodles, cereal, soup, beans or long-life milk, you keep more of them. As you use something, you replace it.

This has several advantages. The food is familiar, it does not quietly expire at the back of a cupboard and the cost can be spread across ordinary shopping trips.

It also avoids one of the great preparedness mistakes: buying food while forgetting everything required to use it.

A pile of tins is of limited value without a can opener. Dried food is not much help without water. Food that requires cooking presents a problem if the household’s only cooking appliance depends on electricity.

A food plan therefore needs to answer three questions:

Will we actually eat it?
Can we prepare it during a power or water interruption?
Do we have everything required to open, cook and serve it?

Japan calls this rolling stock. We call it having a cupboard that is ready for a difficult week without looking as though you are expecting the fall of Rome.

Bottled water is not a water plan

Japanese guidance commonly recommends storing approximately three litres of drinking water per person per day.

The Slightly Anxious Emergency Guide recommends ten litres per person per day. The difference is not quite as dramatic as it first appears.

Japan’s three-litre figure is principally about drinking. Our ten-litre figure includes drinking, cooking, basic washing, cleaning and limited sanitation.

If you store only drinking water, you still need to decide how you will wash your hands, prepare food and deal with the toilet.

Japan addresses this particularly well through its emphasis on portable toilets. Tokyo’s guidance suggests calculating the number required by multiplying daily toilet visits by the number of people in the household and the number of days being planned for.

It also warns that a toilet may be unsafe to use even after the water comes back. Damaged drains or sewer pipes can cause waste to return in a direction nobody wants to contemplate.

The Japanese and Slightly Anxious figures are therefore not really contradictory. They are two ways of reaching the same conclusion: a few bottles for drinking are useful, but they do not constitute a complete household water and sanitation plan

One failure rarely arrives alone

Much Japanese preparedness begins with an earthquake. The shaking may overturn furniture, break water pipes, damage gas supplies, interrupt electricity, stop lifts and block roads within a matter of minutes.

British households face a different collection of hazards, but the chain reaction is familiar.

A power cut can affect heating, lighting, refrigeration, cooking, communications, card payments and sometimes water. Flooding can close roads, interrupt deliveries, contaminate water and prevent care workers or emergency services from reaching people. Extreme heat can place pressure on electricity and water systems just as demand increases.

This is why the Emergency Guide is organised around household needs rather than a catalogue of disasters. Water, warmth, light, food, health, sanitation, information and evacuation remain necessary regardless of what caused the disruption.

Japan and Slightly Anxious share the same underlying principle: prepare for the consequences, not merely the headline event.

Knowing your risks and knowing your house

Japan’s preparedness system is highly location-specific. Residents can consult hazard maps showing potential exposure to floods, landslides, tsunamis and other threats. Communities have designated evacuation locations, and official advice distinguishes between somewhere used to escape an immediate danger and a shelter intended for a longer stay.

Japan also operates Earthquake Early Warnings, tsunami warnings and the national J-Alert system. Its five-level evacuation structure helps people understand when to become more alert, when vulnerable residents should leave and when everybody in a dangerous location should evacuate.

British emergency advice is less likely to involve earthquakes or tsunamis. Here, the useful equivalent is knowing the risks around your own home and understanding how that home works.

Can you find and operate the stopcock?
Do you know which switches control the electricity?
How quickly does the house become uncomfortably cold without heating?
Can everybody who might need to act find the torch, medication and important phone numbers?
Have you checked the flood risk for your address rather than assuming that “we don’t live near a river” settles the question?

Japan teaches people to understand their physical surroundings. Slightly Anxious applies that same principle inside the British home.

Do not rely on one phone

Japan’s communication planning assumes that ordinary calls may become congested during a major disaster. Families are encouraged to agree in advance how they will make contact, and services such as disaster message line 171 provide another way to exchange information.

The Emergency Guide recommends choosing an out-of-area contact. When local networks are under pressure, it may be easier for household members to contact someone elsewhere than to reach each other directly.

Both approaches also recognise that a smartphone is not an entire communications plan.

Phones run out of power. Networks become congested. Mobile data can fail while text messages still work, or one network may be affected more seriously than another. Alerts are valuable, but they should be supported by a charged power bank, a radio, written contact details and an agreed family plan.

The question is not, “Do we have a phone?”

It is, “What will we do if the phone is not enough?”

Self-help does not mean being on your own

Japanese preparedness is often described through three ideas: self-help, mutual help and public help.

Individuals and households prepare themselves. Neighbours and communities help one another.

Government and emergency services provide organised assistance.

The important word is “and”. Household preparation is not a rejection of public services. It recognises that a major emergency may affect too many people for help to reach everybody immediately.

This is equally relevant in Britain. Registering an eligible person for the Priority Services Register, agreeing how neighbours might help one another and considering the needs of children, older people, disabled people and pets all form part of a realistic plan.

Official assistance can also be available without being accessible. A bottled-water station is little use to someone who cannot travel to it or carry several heavy bottles home. A warning sent to a smartphone may not reach a person whose phone is switched off, uncharged or unsupported.

Good preparedness starts with people as they actually are, not with an imaginary household in which everybody is fit, mobile, confident and available.

Where Japan goes further

Japan’s arrangements for people caught away from home are especially worth studying.

Following a major earthquake, Tokyo may have millions of people trying to travel simultaneously through damaged or congested streets. Businesses are therefore encouraged to shelter employees for roughly 72 hours rather than immediately sending everyone home.

Japanese advice consequently considers supplies at work as well as at home. It also distinguishes between household stores and the smaller emergency bag that would be taken during an evacuation.

British guidance could do more in this area. Many of us have thought about losing power at home but not about being stranded at work, separated from family or unable to use our normal route home.

A few essentials kept at work, suitable walking shoes, essential medication and an agreed family plan could matter more than an elaborate collection of equipment stored in the wrong place.

Your to do list is:

1. Keep extra of the food you already eat, and use and replace it

2. Store water for more than drinking

3. Plan for the toilet

4. Know your house: stopcock, fuse box, how fast it gets cold

5. Agree how the family will contact each other

6. Think about what happens if you are away from home

Prepared, not frightened

Japan’s preparedness culture is impressive, but it is not infallible. The 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake exposed serious difficulties involving sanitation, privacy, nutrition, accessibility and the delivery of supplies to isolated communities.

No amount of planning makes a disaster comfortable. Nor can a well-stocked household replace functioning infrastructure and effective public services.

Preparedness simply improves the starting position.

Japan shows what can happen when emergency planning becomes an accepted part of everyday life. Slightly Anxious applies much of the same thinking to the realities of British households: utility controls, cold homes, water interruptions, inaccessible shops, failed card payments and the complicated consequences of ordinary services stopping.

The lesson is not that Britain should copy Japan in every detail. Our hazards, buildings and public systems are different.

The lesson is that preparedness works best when it is ordinary.

Keep food you already eat. Store enough water for more than drinking. Plan for the toilet. Know your house. Agree how the family will communicate. Think about what happens if you are away from home. Make allowance for people who may need extra help.

Then get on with your life.

That is not panic. It is not survivalism. It is simply being slightly anxious at a useful time.