Off to Tokyo tomorrow for what promises to be the coldest and least floral ohanami party ever.

Um. Eep. That....is a lot of earthquakes in a week and a half. Although to be fair, I don't know how many is just a normal day for Japan. Still, the initial countdown to the big earthquake and then that big blue circle just going boom...eep.

There are now 9080 confirmed dead with more than 13 000 still missing. I was, at least, wrong about the time for miracles being past. I don't think there will be too many more of them, but by now you've probably heard about how a grandmother and her teenaged grandson were found alive after nine days. Their story made both the front and back pages of the newspaper we get at work. They were trapped in the kitchen and were at least able to reach the fridge. It took that poor boy nine days to finally work his way to the roof. I think they are thisclose to being national heroes simply by virtue of surviving.

Anyway. Holiday next week! I'm heading to Tokyo on Saturday to experience the aftershocks for myself, although probably by Saturday night we will be drunk enough that we wouldn't notice if the Tokyo Tower fell down. We are supposed to be doing an ohanami on Sunday but I doubt the blossoms will be out yet. Not that that's the main reason for the party, but it does provide a nice backdrop. Andy and his friends are heading off to Hiroshima on the Monday, so I'll have to figure out where to go from there. I need to talk to Masami and find out if the new school will need any work, but probably the floor people will be busy in there so we won't be able to do much. Strange to think that this was my last Tuesday at the Hatsuoi school.

I went downtown today and at the station they had one of those portable earthquake simulator thingies. Oh HELL no. My goal in life is to make it to the end of my days without ever experiencing that sort of thing, real or not. Besides, I don't imagine that practicing would make me any less likely to panic in the event of the real thing happening.

Andy recently posted a link to an article stating that there has been an outbreak of iodine poisoning as people not even in Japan self-medicate to prepare themselves for the forthcoming nuclear apocalypse. No, wait, I'm pretty sure I meant to throw quotation marks around those last two words. Anyway. I suppose I hope that these people suffer no lingering side effects other than an acute awareness of their own idiocy, but I do hope that they and the people around them remember this the next time they are tempted to blindly panic. A friend in Montana says that people there have been buying iodine tablets. Montana! People. Step away from the iodine tablets. You are not going to start glowing in the dark. Please leave the iodine tablets for the people who are actually exposed to radiation, mmmkay?

Not to make light of the nuclear situation at all, but it is nowhere near as bad as it has been made out to be by some of the more irresponsible media outlets. The latest news that I've heard is that they are looking good to restore power to some of the reactors, so the cooling mechanisms will start working again.

One week on and I've finally started noticing some non-Japanese related headlines in the online papers. Not here, though. Not with half a million people still living in shelters and more than 10 000 still missing. The death toll is around 7000 by now. I suppose we can hope that some of those missing are sheltering safely somewhere where they just haven't been found yet, but after a week I suspect that the time for miracles is over, especially considering the freezing weather and the snow.

I found a link to this relief effort the other day. If a charity can be called adorable, then this is it. It is also pretty genius in its simplicity. Socks! People are cold, they are tired, they are in shock. Many fled with only the clothes on their back. I remember how great slipping on a pair of dry, warm socks felt after I had spent the day tramping around Kyoto in the rain, and that was after a decidedly non-traumatic five hours or so of sightseeing. There are a lot of critical comments, but I think his Q&A section deals with potential issues quite nicely. (I particularly like "Q: Could this be fraudulent? A: Not unless you think I go through a lot of socks.")

You want to do something proactive? Don't buy iodine or geiger counters. Buy socks. Donate to the charity of your choice. And if you do see someone buying iodine tablets while looking panicky, do me a favour and smack them upside the head. Thanks!

I found this excellent article that explains about how most of Japan is not in chaos. You really should read the whole thing, it's very good, but I particularly want to stress this bit:

See, the thing that people don’t realize is that Honshu is massive. It is larger than Great Britain. (A country which does not typically refer to itself as a “tiny island nation.”) At about 800 miles long, it stretches from roughly Chicago to New Orleans. Quite a lot of the reporting on Japan, including that which is scaring the heck out of my friends and family, is the equivalent of someone ringing up Mayor Daley during Katrina and saying “My God man, that’s terrible — how are you coping?”

So to recap once again some more: I am fine. Life is normal here, except for a sudden inability to buy toilet paper or rice. Luckily I have plenty of the former (and am not above "borrowing" from work) and enough of the latter to last me a while.

In the meantime the temperature has plunged once again, which would be annoying at the best of times but is particularly devastating just now, what with all the homeless people.

Oh, and here's another excellent article, this time about donations.

In more adorable news, Liam has his very own email address now. Masami asked me to send him a message today, so I sent him a picture of a Transformer (he can't actually read yet.)

From an earlier conversation with Tanya about the toilet paper crisis:

You need to TP your apartment with crossword puzzle TP, or sudoku TP, and then carry a pen/pencil at all times. That way in case of collapse you have something to do while you're waiting for rescue.
Rescuer: "HELLO! ANYONE THERE?!"
Alisa: "HEY! WHAT WAS THE NAME OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE'S HORSE? 7 LETTERS, THIRD LETTER IS 'R'..."
Rescuer: "WE'LL HAVE YOU OUT IN A FEW MINUTES!"
Alisa: "MARENGO! IT'S OK, I GOT IT!"

I am mailing some to Andy today, although the poor bastard will have to make do with single ply.

We finally got hit by an aftershock tonight. A 6.2 centered to the east of Hamamatsu, with it being about a 3 here. Normally a 3 causes me to pause whatever I'm doing, wait to see if it intensifies, and then shrug and go on with my day, but this time you'd better believe I bolted for the doorway. I did, however, pause to grab the beer I was drinking.

Not the longest or the strongest quake I've been through but hands down the most terrifying to date. Things are fine, though. It was just an aftershock and not a fresh new quake, plus it was inland so no threat of tsunami. The talk was flying fast and furious on facebook immediately afterwards and my old colleague Andrew (not to be confused with my current colleague Andrew, or Andy in Tokyo) said that as far as he could tell from the tv (which was all "DO NOT WORRY, IT'S ALL GOOD, CHILL!"), the worst damage was some smashed bottles in a convenience store.

Meanwhile some 500 000 people up north are huddled in shelters without enough food or drinking water or warm clothes. Andrew (bossman Andrew) said his daughters' kindergarten was accepting donations of blankets and clothes, etc, but we have not been able to find anything else. I would have thought that at least the post office would have huge signs up telling you how to post funds to relief organizations, but nada.

And in a similar if less serious vein, Andy has been unable to buy toilet paper in Tokyo as it seems people are emptying the shelves of all the basics. I jokingly offered to mail him some more the other day and he declined, but tonight emailed me to say that maybe he would take me up on that. So tomorrow I am making up a toilet paper care package. I am somewhat tempted to buy as much as I can for myself and then use it to line the walls with. I'd never run out, AND my walls would be both soft and absorbent .

In more lighthearted news, Rob found this at a 100 yen store today and posted it on Facebook. It is a "smoke guard", and the kanji assures us that using it is both safe and easy. If you are thinking to yourself that it looks rather like the woman is putting a plastic bag on her head, that's because she IS putting a plastic bag on her head. Rob bought the smoke guard, took it home, opened it, and then posted a picture of himself with the plastic bag (no airholes, that would let the smoke in!) on his head, giving two thumbs up and captioned "safe as houses!"

People of Japan, protect yourself from nasty things in the air* by safely and easily placing this plastic bag on your head! As a bonus, it also helps prevent radiation sickness by smothering you to death long before you can start to display symptoms.

*like smoke, or oxygen

If I kept the tv off and ignored bits of the internet, it would be so easy to forget that anything happened at all on Friday. Life continues here pretty much exactly as normal. Plenty of food and water and electricity and not so much as a picture frame askew. At times it is almost impossible to grasp that the other half of the country is going through hell right now. Even in Tokyo Andy reports that the queues in the shops are long (but no looting! Go Japan! Even in the midst of what has been declared the worst catastrophe to hit the country since WWII, they keep their civility.) and that many shops are out of basics like toilet paper. I almost wish they would introduce power blackouts here, if only to feel like we were being useful somehow.

It is tempting at times to actually avoid the internet, as droves of people strive to show off how ignorant and utterly lacking in humanity they are. I have seen numerous "it is payback for Pearl Harbour, bitches!"-type comments, which....a) have you heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? b) so...if you don't count Hiroshima and Nagasaki as payback, God is an American redneck who doesn't mind waiting 70 years to settle a grudge? And today someone linked to a Youtube video of a woman breathlessly detailing how she had started praying at the beginning of Lent for God to show himself to the atheists and lo! He took Japan and shook it by the shoulders! And totally opened the eyes of all the heathens to how He is a loving and amazing God by...wiping out tens of thousands of people, leaving millions more stranded and freezing and in heartbroken shock and also throwing in a fun nuclear meltdown? It would have made more sense had she been an Old Testament fire and brimstone believer, but she sort of came across as breathless happy hippy. The video went on and on but I stopped it shortly in as I was experiencing a strong desire to attempt to reach through my computer and strangle her. I know (hope?) the majority of people are better than this but it is always the idiots who shout the loudest.

Some satellite before and after photos of areas hit by the tsunami.



The death toll is expected to rise to over 10 000, most of that coming from one village.

The nuclear power plant situation is still unfolding.

Which makes it all the more surreal that life here is going on as normal. (Well, except for the fact that gas is getting scarce in the stations and a lot more people are buying cases of bottled water.) I had a farewell brunch to go to downtown today, so I broke in the new bike. It is a joy to ride, all smooth and quiet. It appears, though, that no matter how posh the bike, the seat is still not going to be comfortable.

The brunch was held at the Mexican restaurant, which is just around the corner from the new school, so I finally got to see it. Well, the outside, anyway. I think this means I will be eating dinner out a lot more often from now on. Given the choice between finishing at 8:30ish, riding home for nearly an hour, and then starting dinner, or nipping around the corner for a burrito and beer, I think I know which one I will choose.

Grrr. The one tv channel I have that sometimes broadcasts news in English is doing nothing but repeating tsunami warnings over and over in four languages. Yes. I think by now we have all figured out that going to the beach is a bad idea, and anyway, the graphic of Japan in the corner of the tv with the entire coastline ringed in flashing colours sort of gives you the idea anyway. What I would like, now, is some coverage in English about what is happening with the exploding nuclear power plant.

So, I was going to do a cheerful happy post about how I bought my shiny new bicycle and isn't it nice riding something that doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart at any given moment and it's practically a ninja bike, it's so much quieter than the old one, but, well...

I didn't even feel the earthquake at all as it was very mild here and I was on the bus at the time. The bus driver did turn the radio on, which was an absolute first, so I knew something was going on, and worked out the tsunami warning, but mostly I was reading my book and not paying attention. When I got to the kindy, Hozumi asked me if I had felt the earthquake so that's when I knew there had been one, but it wasn't until Masami picked me up with the tv on in her car that I began to understand the magnitude. And even then I was distracted by Ewan climbing all over me and referring to the people wearing helmets as "turtles".

Andy lost all his wineglasses and assorted crockery, but luckily the bottle of 12 year old single malt survived the fall. The only thing I've experienced here is spotty cell phone coverage. Facebook is once again proving its worth as being the easiest way for people to keep in touch here. There is a tsunami warming but I am far enough away from the beach that I don't need to worry.

I've got the news on and they are currently reading out the tsunami warnings, area by area. It would save so much time if they would just say "the entire fucking country, oh, and several others besides".

I am beginning to suspect that maybe we didn't need to open a new school after all and should, instead, have been concentrating on advertising the hell out of the one we have already. The latest advertising blizt (plus the advent of Groupon) has netted us so many trial students this month that we've had to create entire new classes for them instead of just fitting them in existing ones. I have three new classes this week, plus one private lesson, and there will be another class next week on Tuesday. All the new activity means that Masami has been staying later at work/coming back in the evenings, so it's all very busy and whatnot. We are up to three students for the new downtown location, which will not pay the rent, but I guess is not bad for a school that isn't even open for four more weeks (and still needs a proper floor).

Masami showed up to work this week with a big fat catalogue of office supplies (which seem to include Mickey Mouse pens and instant ramen. Oh, Japan.) and we have been flipping through and window shopping. I, of course, concentrate on the more absurd things, like a scarf rack. Doesn't a dedicated scarf rack seem like an excellent use of both space and money? What I'm really lobbying for, though, is a nice comfy couch. Until my days down there fill up I suspect there will be a lot of lounging about and reading on my part. I am also maybe kind of sort of thinking that if we had a comfy enough couch, I could opt to crash on it on the occasional night I want to stay out late.

Not that I want to stay out late right now. Few things will suck the life right out of me faster than a bout of allergies. I have had two naps this week! Two! I never nap! I talk about them all the time but usually make do with a cup of tea and a bit of quiet time instead. The only reason I didn't have a nap yesterday was because I wasn't at home for 12 full hours. Luckily I still had some meds in my cabinet from last year and they decided to work this year. (Why any given medicine will work some years but not others is the bane of my existence come spring.) The bad news is I only have two left to tide me over until mom can get me a new shipment, but the good news is I got an unexpected parcel of chocolate and drugs today. (One of my favourite combinations.) Rob got a care package from Ireland and so he and Tomoko kindly decided to send me a chocolate bar, one of those "hot chocolate on a stick" thingies, and a package of extra meds. No idea if they work, but I look forward to experimenting this weekend.

Oh goody, it's cold again. I sure missed that. And the combination of freezing and sneezing? Delightful!

I went bike window shopping today. D2 has a bunch, but for the most part I couldn't tell the difference between the ones that cost 8000 yen and the ones that cost 18 000. If I'm going to spend that much money, I'm going to get a fancy pretty bike like this one:



The other bikes are a very uninspiring dull gray sort of deal. I'm not sure, though, if I'm willing to pay more than 10 000 for a bike. Sure, mine has never been stolen, but that is probably because it is a mobile rust bucket. Could I trust people to keep their paws off a shiny beauty like the one in the pictures? Decisions, decisions.

Next time I get a new phone I am paying attention to the camera. You never know when the kindergarten you are teaching at is going to have a demonstration on how to turn a 40 kg tuna into sashimi. I didn't get a lot of pictures but at least I managed to snap these ones of the head. Also something I didn't get? Sashimi. Boo. The kids are eating it for lunch today, though. There were also a lot of tuna steaks at the end that I was eyeballing. For a moment I considered getting the kids to start a diversion so I could sneak one into my bag, but ultimately decided against it.

I am loving the fact that the pollen has been drowned for the past few days, but I'm about ready to see some sun again. All this trudging to and fro with pants oh-so-attractively tucked into wellies is wearing thin. (Just in case anyone was wondering if I had any plans to move to Vancouver ever.)

We have two students for the new school. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's not even open yet, so that is a hopeful sign. So far my entire downtown schedule consists of a private lesson on Tuesdays from 8-8:40 pm. On the other hand, our recent advertising blitz has resulted in a truly astonishing amount of trial students for March. I have an entire new class tomorrow! Which will interfere with my lazy napping/book reading time, but probably I shouldn't complain. (Although I do have a huge pile of books to work through...)

I've decided to celebrate the opening of the new school by buying a new bike. Nothing fancy, just something that does not make the bike lady wince in horror whenever I bring it in to get air in the tires. Kim said she thought I was just going to keep riding it until it was nothing but a pile of iron ore and a puddle of oil, and that certainly was the plan, but if I'm going downtown three days a week I might want a ride where the chain is not constantly jumping off every time I hit a bump. Also the last time I took it into the shop the bike lady muttered something about the brakes and then shook her head sadly. Hopefully at some point this week there will be a combination of no rain and no debilitating sneezing so that I can go poke around the bike shops.