"Mr Sato said centres already housing people who had been moved from their homes near the plant did not have enough hot meals and basic necessities such as fuel and medical supplies. "We're lacking everything," he said."
The point here is that the bottleneck is distribution of things that already exist, not getting them to Japan in the first place.
Thats almost 500 miles (750ish km). He may have felt an earthquake, and a strong one at that, but he did not survive a natural disaster and he certainly is not in the middle of a nuclear disaster. From his perspective, everything is perfectly fine.
On August 30th 2005, I moved from Pennsylvania back to my hometown in the West. Hurricane Katrina hit that previous night, and despite the gas bill costing a bit more than I had originally budgeted, as long as I kept the news radio down I was none the wiser as to anything going on down there as I crawled across the country.
Patrick, as much as the HN Japanese guy he is, is in the same position I was. He life is a little inconvenienced and it sounds like he is a little busy doing whatever his disaster/emergency related Salaryman job does. That said, I like his perspective, and I think it helps up understand that all of Japan is not sinking or melting. The parts that are though do need our help, and I think it would be good of him to distinguish between where he is being just fine and the North area that certainly is not doing well, even if the situation up there is under control.