Kazuya Yamamoto, a fish monger in Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.

By Yuka Tachibana, NBC News Producer

TOKYO – At Tsukiji, Tokyo's main fish market, fishmonger Kazuya Yamamoto’s business has plummeted since the earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan on March 11.

“Business has been slow. We used to have many customers from the north where the earthquake and tsunami struck, but obviously not now,” Yamamoto told NBC News.

Tsukiji is the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. More than 400 different types of seafood are sold in the market daily – from cheap seaweed to massive 600 pound tunas.

The Tsukiji market was actually built after Tokyo's main fresh produce market was wiped out in the devastating Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake, Japan’s deadliest on record, left nearly 150,000 people dead or missing and wiped out much of central Tokyo.

But it’s not just the lack of clientele from the north that worries Yamamoto. The radiation leak from the crippled nuclear power plant has left consumers jittery about what they eat and with news of sea water contamination, although minute according to Japanese authorities, Yamamoto says people are shying away from buying fish.
 
“All of us are worried about the radiation – it seems the government hasn't been forthcoming with accurate information, and that makes us even more concerned,” said Yamamoto.

The Japanese government finally admitted Tuesday that the safeguards that had been in place to protect the nuclear plant against the earthquake and tsunami that severely damaged the facility and caused it to spew radiation were insufficient. The government vowed it would overhaul safety standards.

And with the news that highly radioactive water has been filling up in a concrete trench under reactor Number 2 at Fukushima plant, there is concern that if the situation is not contained, the radioactive water could find its way into the ocean.   

Yamamoto says if the situation is not brought under control, it will have a devastating effect on business.

“If the situation is not remedied, I am sure that radiation will have an effect on the sea water, and if that happens, we're all going to be in serious trouble.”

Courtesy of Steven Negishi

Steven Negishi poses in front of cherry blossoms in Yokosuka, Japan about a week before the earthquake struck.

By Miranda Leitsinger, Senior Writer and Editor, msnbc.com

Steven Negishi’s friends are leaving Japan, his family is bundling up at home to stay warm since there is no heat and the shelves are nearly empty at the stores – but he wants the world to know, Japan “will come back.”

“This country is not going to become a nuclear wasteland,” the 34-year-old Japanese-American said in a phone interview. “I’ve always felt that this country was at a tipping point economically, socially and politically, and the last thing this country needs is the world to turn its back against us because of our government’s ineptness and incompetency. If people are going to start labeling Japanese as unsafe, or Japan as unsafe, it’s going to do major psychiatric damage to all of us.”

Negishi has been working out of his family’s house in Yokosuka, about 30 miles southwest of Tokyo and home to the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet, since the quake on March 11 upended the country.

Courtesy of Steven Negishi

Stranded passengers glued to NHK Public Broadcast's coverage of the earthquake inside JR Tokyo Station on March 11, the day the quake struck.

“It’s very difficult, the supply shortages and the physical and the mental toll that it takes. We don’t know when this thing is going to end, if the government is … disclosing real information to the public,” said Negishi, who works in the finance industry and lives with his parents and two sisters. 

“It was quite a challenge this past week having to work from home,” he said, noting there was no gas in his city. “We cannot go and get kerosene for the kerosene heater, so we just bundle up and try to get through the day.”

His family had been lucky to dodge several scheduled power outages, but they had the first one on Thursday.

“The power went out, the Internet was off and I couldn’t do any work and that’s when it hit me, the severity of it, feeling isolated and lonely and I ended up calling a lot of people… just to try to alleviate the loneliness as well as being in the dark,” he said.

He said his company had offered to relocate him, as other companies are doing – some domestically, others elsewhere in Asia – but he said he needed to look after his family, as the oldest son.

“I can’t abandon them,” he said. “People are leaving left and right, I’ll be honest with you, it’s very sad. And, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to meet these people (again).”

A photo Steven Negishi took of bare grocery store shelves in Tokyo.

Still, he said he thinks the recovery process could bring a renewed sense of hope and a rebirth, which “was lacking in this country for a long, long time,” and said he deeply appreciated international efforts and outreach.

“This is a dire situation. We are all victims of this,” he said. But he noted that Japan has recovered from many natural disasters. “This is going to be a big, big challenge, but we will come back.”