I am starting to understand more and more of the news and I must say, American news networks should take note.
I just watched a story about an outbreak of food poisoning at a restaurant (5 people have died and about 100 are sick) and the story was not about pointing fingers and blaming people. The story began by introducing the three places where the meat could have been contaminated. First the reporter took a tour of the slaughterhouse where the meat came from and documented the methods that the slaughterhouse used. They checked current meat stocks and demonstrated how they take pride in their quality control processes. In the end, they talked about extra safety precautions they will add to prevent this type of thing from happening again.
Next they showed the company that shipped the meat to the restaurant. Again they showed how the shipment process worked and then ways they were preventing the situation from happening again.
And then they go to the restaurant and show the kitchen where the meat is prepared and repeat the same process of explaining the process and what they are doing to improve.
Finally they show some of the customers who were sick and document their stories.
As almost an afterthought, at the end of the story they said the owner of the restaurant had resigned and he gave his apology.
And that was it. The story was about what was being done about the situation and ways to improve in the future. This is so different than American news stories. They would have focused on blaming the meat producers, demand that the owner of the restaurant give them lots of money and there would have been very little, mention of things that were being done to improve the situation. They would have told everyone that if you eat any meat, you will die. They would have said it was the worst epidemic of food poisoning in history and that this could potentially get worse and end the meat industry. They would have said it was the democrats/republicans (depending on which news channel you were watching) fault for cutting funding to the FDA and then blamed the FDA for not catching the contaminated meat until it was too late. They would have a press conference for Obama and got his thoughts on the event and then spend 2 hours either attacking or praising what he said.
This was also blatantly obvious in the news reports of the Sendai earthquake. In Japan, nothing except stories about how they are cleaning up Sendai and what they are doing to improve the situation in the Fukashima nuclear plant. Stories that did not place blame on anyone, but instead focused on what was being done.
American news networks covering the Sendai earthquake: Worst disaster in history! All of Japan will become a nuclear dead zone! We can detect high levels of radiation in the ocean even in America! Everyone in Japan is going to be evacuated! Are we safe here in America? Glen Beck saying it was God's way of showing the world that he was unhappy with what the democrats were doing.
Whenever I watched the news in the US, I ended up feeling angry at the end of the story. Whenever I understand a news story in Japan, I end up feeling informed.
So yea, I think two huge things that makes life in Japan so enjoyable is the complete lack of political segregation and unbiased news networks. Hardly anyone in Japan cares what political party you belong to, nobody blames the other party for the making their lives terrible. News stories are about improving current conditions, and nobody worries about what politicians say. I will definitely continue to get my world news from Japan sources when I return to the States, and I will be a much happier person because of it.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Productive day
Hi Heather, mom and papa. Sorry I haven't been updating much. But anyhow I just thought I'd like to remember today since it was super productive.
1) woke up at 4 for morning baseball.
2) Talked to you three
3) Went to the dentist
4) Mailed a couple more packages.
5) Picked up a package
6) Went shopping
7) Finished Minna no Nihongo I
8) Played 5 games of starcraft.
9) Watched my 150th episode of One Piece and definitely can understand it a little bit.
10) Understood a story on the news about food poisoning at a yakiniku restaurant.
11) Posted some 恐山写真 (yasorezan pictures)
12) Took out the trash.
Also, I have given up my desire to translate 10,000 sentences. Writing out sentences was taking way too long and I don't really care too much about my writing ability. I am now focusing on listening and reading during my study time, then whenever I feel like a break, I'll try to strike up a conversation with a coworker to practice talking. My top 3 goals are to be fluent at reading, listening and speaking Japanese, writing comes in a distant fourth.
And also, a story about the kindness of Japanese people. About 20 stories like this have happened to me but I never get around to writing the stories and end up forgetting so I want to make sure I remember at least a few of them.
So the cherry blossoms have started blooming so I went for a walk in Atago Park, the place in Noheji with the most cherry trees. As soon as I enter the park I see a group of about 10 people sitting down with a grill and having a little picnic and we make eye contact and I gave out a hearty "ohayo gozaimasu!" (good morning!) and they return the greetings and then, in their adorable Japanese accents ask me to come over and join their picnic. Of course I can't turn down this offer so I sit down and, although it's only about 11:30, it's Japan, so they are drinking. The first question they ask me is "do you drink beer?" and I said "dijoubu" which I thought meant "no thanks" but I guess it meant something else because they instantly put a beer in my hand and do a cheers and crack open the beer and everyone laughed and celebrated. Now of course I couldn't just be like "no actually I don't want this" and of course it's one of the giant 500mL beers so I begin to do work struggling to finish the beer.
Meanwhile, on the grill they have scallops cooking and they look absolutely delicious. Turns out that the group were all fishermen and these scallops were their morning catch. The scallops were probably the freshest I would ever eat and they just kept putting them on my plate. After about 10 scallops and when I get about half done with my beer (an hour later) they pick it up and are like "ooooh, to-masu...more?" and I remember back that to when I said "no thanks" and that ended up in a beer, so this time I just flat out say "no no" and they are like "oh ok! No beer? Sake then!" and they pour me this giant cup of sake.
After a good 2 hours or so, I stuffed full of amazing scallops and I thanked them and went on with my walk through the park and enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms. I will surely miss the kindness and generosity of Japan.
1) woke up at 4 for morning baseball.
2) Talked to you three
3) Went to the dentist
4) Mailed a couple more packages.
5) Picked up a package
6) Went shopping
7) Finished Minna no Nihongo I
8) Played 5 games of starcraft.
9) Watched my 150th episode of One Piece and definitely can understand it a little bit.
10) Understood a story on the news about food poisoning at a yakiniku restaurant.
11) Posted some 恐山写真 (yasorezan pictures)
12) Took out the trash.
Also, I have given up my desire to translate 10,000 sentences. Writing out sentences was taking way too long and I don't really care too much about my writing ability. I am now focusing on listening and reading during my study time, then whenever I feel like a break, I'll try to strike up a conversation with a coworker to practice talking. My top 3 goals are to be fluent at reading, listening and speaking Japanese, writing comes in a distant fourth.
And also, a story about the kindness of Japanese people. About 20 stories like this have happened to me but I never get around to writing the stories and end up forgetting so I want to make sure I remember at least a few of them.
So the cherry blossoms have started blooming so I went for a walk in Atago Park, the place in Noheji with the most cherry trees. As soon as I enter the park I see a group of about 10 people sitting down with a grill and having a little picnic and we make eye contact and I gave out a hearty "ohayo gozaimasu!" (good morning!) and they return the greetings and then, in their adorable Japanese accents ask me to come over and join their picnic. Of course I can't turn down this offer so I sit down and, although it's only about 11:30, it's Japan, so they are drinking. The first question they ask me is "do you drink beer?" and I said "dijoubu" which I thought meant "no thanks" but I guess it meant something else because they instantly put a beer in my hand and do a cheers and crack open the beer and everyone laughed and celebrated. Now of course I couldn't just be like "no actually I don't want this" and of course it's one of the giant 500mL beers so I begin to do work struggling to finish the beer.
Meanwhile, on the grill they have scallops cooking and they look absolutely delicious. Turns out that the group were all fishermen and these scallops were their morning catch. The scallops were probably the freshest I would ever eat and they just kept putting them on my plate. After about 10 scallops and when I get about half done with my beer (an hour later) they pick it up and are like "ooooh, to-masu...more?" and I remember back that to when I said "no thanks" and that ended up in a beer, so this time I just flat out say "no no" and they are like "oh ok! No beer? Sake then!" and they pour me this giant cup of sake.
After a good 2 hours or so, I stuffed full of amazing scallops and I thanked them and went on with my walk through the park and enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms. I will surely miss the kindness and generosity of Japan.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Goals
Every day:
By Jan 1 2010
By Feb 1st
By March 1
By April 1
By May 1:
June 1 2011
November 1 2011
December 1 2011
July 2012
- Anki (Clear my completed decks)
- Watch Japanese TV
By Jan 1 2010
50 episodes of 1 Piece500 kanji from RTK
By Feb 1st
Finish RTK
By March 1
100 Episodes of One Piece HOMEski/snowboard 10 timesDo first half of Rosetta Stone (8 units). HOMEFinish the core 2000 Level 1 anki deck SCHOOL
By April 1
150 Episodes of One Piece HOMEFinish Japanese Core 2000 levels 2-3 SCHOOLFinish the Japanese Graded Readers level 2
By May 1:
- Have at least 5 days with no English. Watch lots of TV and movies so I can be fully immersed in Japanese. (2 of 5 done, phone calls with Heather allowed)
Understand 90% of the level 2 Japanese Graded Readers
June 1 2011
- JLPT lvl 4 (not quite) I'd probably get about 50% on the test, 60% is passing.
Finish Minna no Nihongo I- Get my ko2001 deck down to 5000 cards (around 5300ish)
- Have at least 5 days with no English. Watch lots of TV and movies so I can be fully immersed in Japanese. (0 of 5 done, phone calls with Heather allowed)
Understand 80% each of the level 3 Japanese Graded Readers.Clear all reviews in Anki (my RTK deck had over 1000 reviews due for a while)
July 1 2011
- Finish Minna no Nihongo II
- Get my ko2001 deck down to 4000 cards
- Finish Core 2000 (get each deck down below 100 cards)
123 4 5 67 8 9 10
- Have at least 5 days with no English. Watch lots of TV and movies so I can be fully immersed in Japanese. (0 of 5 done, phone calls with Heather allowed)
- Clear my RTK kanji deck at school
- Understand at least half of one piece/pokemon/final fantasy advent children/conversations between teachers/news/tv without subtitles/morning teachers meetings
- Get my ko2001 deck down to 3000 cards
- Have at least 5 days with no English. Watch lots of TV and movies so I can be fully immersed in Japanese. (0 of 5 done, phone calls with Heather allowed)
- Beat Metal Gear Solid 3 for PS2 in Japanese
- Beat a Final Fantasy game in Japanese(right now leaning toward FFXII)
- Get my ko2001 deck down to 2000 cards
- Return CLAIR advance course books to Val (aka, finish advanced course)
- Get Core 6000 down to about 500 cards per deck.
- Have at least 5 days with no English. Watch lots of TV and movies so I can be fully immersed in Japanese. (2 of 5 done, phone calls with Heather allowed)
November 1 2011
- Finish writing the names for all my teachers.
December 1 2011
- Pass the JLPT level 3 (actually take the test, not just practice tests online)
- Speak very little English.
- Finish the 5 cmps anki deck
- 0 cards in my ko2001 deck
- Finish Japanese Core 6000 (get each deck down below 100 cards)
- Finish every episode of One Piece
July 2012
- Pass JLPT lvl 2
- Understand and be able to write any random sentence from anime/conversations between teachers/news/tv/morning teachers meetings
- Understand this song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dp4OoVfXgs
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Last Earthquake Post
I don't think there's anyone that reads this that isn't my facebook friend, but just in case you aren't and you want to see pictures of Earthquake stuff, simply click here.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The Sendai Earthquake
This is not finished, but I thought I'd put it out there. I might finish it later, but I think I got out most of it, except for the kindness of other people, I need to add more about how nice everyone was to me, Will and Beth. Theres no way they would have been able to get home so soon without other people's kindness.
Wednesday March 9, 2011
I wake up before my alarm clock which is surprising considering Will and Beth came yesterday and we didn't get to bed until 11:30. As usual, I slept in my trusty winter coat, my favorite mother-made Beatles hoodie, and a t-shirt. The temperature of my room was hovering around zero but I was nice and toasty. I wake up Beth since she was coming with me on my school visit to Rokkasho. Since they are only staying for two days and I want to take them out to eat to several places, my apartment is basically out of food and I settle for an apple and some granola for breakfast.
As 7:30 approaches, Beth and I go to wait out by the bus stop a couple minutes early. We hear the nice calming music blast through Noheji that signified it had reached 7:30. Still no ride.
"This is strange, Tobenai sensei is always on time." I say to Beth as we wait. Tobenai sensei, among other things, is famous for being a pro snowboarder and waking up every morning at 4am to go fishing. His friendly sputtering English always make the 45 minute long ride to Rokkasho very enjoyable. After another 15 minutes pass, Beth goes back to the apartment to retrieve my cell phone and I see there are seven missed calls.
"I'm very very sorry Tomasu-sensei but Tobenai sensei has gotten a flat tire and he is getting it fixed! I'm so sorry, but I gave your phone number to Rinako sensei and she will come to pick you up and take you to Rokkasho, please go inside and wait until Rinako sensei calls you so you do not get cold." Says the message from my supervisor displaying her perfect English and incredible friendliness.
After we arrived in Rokkasho we learn that we have two classes to teach today. The first goes by without a hitch. Each class has around 40 students and we do a simple activity where they have to speak English to fill out a bingo card and the first 12 students to finish their card get a Starburst.
"Is this the same class?" Beth says as we walk into our second class with 40 completely new students. I turn around to see the Japanese teacher's reaction.
"No, this is a different class..." Rinako sensei casually answers unaware of the American stereotype that all Asians look alike. Beth introduces herself to the second class, I explain the activity and things are running along smoothly. Students are finishing up and returning to their seats when I begin to feel the platform I'm standing on shake. I look up to the lights and see them sway back and forth. I look to Beth and Rinako sensei.
"Jishin." Rinako sensei says, the Japanese word for earthquake. This is Beth's first earthquake and my third. The students go silent. Everyone is sitting there waiting for the shaking to stop. 10 seconds pass, the shaking strengthens. 30 seconds pass, the earthquake again kicks into a higher gear. The other two that I have experienced were over in about 10-15 seconds. The students begin to feel something is wrong, maybe this is the Tokai Earthquake, the "Big One" that has been long overdue. When the earthquake kicked into third gear, the students dove under their desks. Beth, Rinako and I were standing there, hoping the earthquake wouldn't continue to increase its intensity. Another minute passes, the shaking continues.
The lights are now swaying rather violently. Finally, well over a minute after the shaking started, it stops as suddenly as it started. Just a high 3 or low 4 on the scale, nothing too bad. No damage done, just a few skipped heartbeats. We finish up the lesson as usual. Little did we know that two days later, the aftershock would be the strongest earthquake in Japan's history.
"What did you think of your first earthquake?" We ask Will when we return home.
"What earthquake?" Will says. He had been walking at the time of the earthquake and did not feel it. "Dangit! I kind of want to feel an earthquake to see what it's like." Two days later, Wilbur would get his wish.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Waking up late maybe saved the lives of the three of us. We spent the previous day skiing and eating copious amounts of Japan's most famous food, sushi. Since Noheji is nearly shut down until 11:00am when all the restaurants open for lunch, I take the time in the morning to start cleaning up a little bit. Will and Beth arrived to a pretty dirty apartment and I felt kind of bad so I did a few loads of laundry and tried to clean up a bit.
We woke up around 9 with only one plan for the day; take the Shinkansen down to Tokyo. There were still several restaurants restaurants that I wanted to take them to before they left. We decided on soba and a bento box lunch restaurant where you can make your own bento. The soba was delicious like all Japanese food and we returned to the house to pack up. We took our time and looked up train schedules.
"Theres a train to Aomori that leaves Noheji station at 2:59 pm, how about we catch that then we can get on any of the Shinkansens from Aomori to Tokyo." I tell to Will and Beth at about 1:00. We head to the bento lunch restaurant around 2:00 and arrive there by 2:30. We fill up the plastic boxes with traditional Japanese pot-luck style food and make our way back to the train station to catch our train.
"You guys go up ahead, I need to buy a ticket." I tell them, since they have Japan Rail passes that let them take any JR train for free, they don't have to take the time to buy tickets at each train station. It was now 2:50 and the 9.0 earthquake had happened five minutes earlier nearly 200 miles away off the coast of Sendai. The longitudinal waves of the earthquake were gradually making the long journey to Noheji.
As I reach for my wallet to pay for my ticket to Aomori, I feel the building shake. "Not a big deal. This is a train station, trains go by and shake the building all the time," I tell myself. A few seconds pass, I look to the train tracks and don't see any trains. "It's a windy day, maybe there was just a strong gust of wind." I think next. Not the case. 15 seconds have passed, the shaking has only gotten worse. People have started to leave the station in a panic. I look over and see Will and Beth standing there.
"Earthquake!" I shout as I make my way outside. I reach for my camera and start to point it at all of the crazy sights that are happening around me. The cars on the road screech to a halt and drivers get out of their cars. Power lines sway back and forth. The street soon becomes filled with people leaving their houses and restaurants. The ground has been shaking for minutes and is still going strong. Power goes out to the train station. Everyone takes out their phones to check the news to find out where the epicenter is. After what seemed like hours, the four minutes of shaking finally cease. We look around, see that there is no damage to nearby buildings and assume it was just another weak earthquake and no damage done. The three of us know that our train is leaving for Aomori and we don't want to miss it. We start to head toward the track number three at Noheji station.
"NO NO STOP STOP." We hear a voice yelling from behind us. "No trains!"
What with the power being out, we should have known that the electric trains probably weren't running, but in our haste we weren't thinking clearly. I ask him when the trains were coming.
"No today, no. Close." He says in a thick Japanese accent. As he finishes, the building shakes again. This would be the second of nearly 20 earthquakes we would feel in the next two days. Seeing no damage done, we are a little confused, but assume that the power plants have preemptively shut down power for a little bit in case there are any aftershocks. We head back to the apartment, confident that power will be resumed in the next few hours. On the walk back to the apartment, the loud speakers that usually play music throughout the town are instead issuing announcements. My Japanese still isn't good enough to understand what the announcements were saying, but I can usually pick the word "Sendai" out of each announcement and assume that the rest of the announcement was saying something about the power being turned back on soon. While walking, it is difficult to feel earthquakes, but we felt at least one more on the walk back to the house.
The bento was delicious, but after taking our time eating it and a couple hours passing without any electricity we begin to get worried. Another couple aftershocks started getting me thinking that this wasn't a normal earthquake. The announcements would continue to play, I can only understand "Sendai" and nothing else. I try to call my supervisor to get some idea of when power would be back up, but whenever I tried dialing a number, I just got this Japanese operator speaking to me in Japanese. I tried to send a text message to her, but after five failed attempts, I knew the cell phone towers were down.
"There is clearly something wrong with this world." I say after feeling out seventh aftershock in the matter of a few hours. Since my apartment is nearly out of food, we go outside to start looking for dinner. The Lawson convenience store is out of of its refrigerated section so we go to a drug store. The drug store is just closing open but the line to check out was at least 60 people long. At the start of the line, one lady adding up all of the prices of goods by hand. Since the power was out they couldn't scan the bar codes. It was up to the customer to tell the cashier the price of each item they bought. This policy is classic of Japanese people, relying on the honesty of the customer and the store not trying to take advantage of panicked people. During the disaster, it was a far more common site in Japan to see people lining up to use a pay phone than seeing people loot stores with no power.
We decide the 2 hour or longer wait wasn't worth it so we go to the grocery store and see the line well out the door. Again, not worth the wait since power will be back soon. We go back to the Lawson and stock up on some dry food and Big Thunder bars and head back to the apartment. The dark night consists of us draining my laptop battery watching One Piece, a couple more aftershocks and an early bedtime. We go to bed around 9, confident that power will be back when we wake up and then we would catch an early train down to Tokyo the next day.
"This isn't what I meant what I said I wanted to feel an earthquake," Will says. After going the entire day with no heater, the apartment is floating around 0 degrees Celsius and for the first time, the three of us sleep in the same room.
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
We slept in complete darkness with the light switches turned on. If power had returned, we would have woken up to the burst of light in the room. Unfortunately, we wake up to the raising sun rather than the living room light. Will and Beth's flight leaves at 5:00pm tomorrow so we need to get down to Tokyo.
Saturday March 19th, 2011
This morning I wake up. A full week after the devastating earthquake that has taken the lives of tens of thousands. CNN is back to covering celebrity gossip, Fox News is back to questioning Obama's every move, Japanese TV is back to showing crazy game shows. Things seem to be getting back to normal and I sit down to write this story.
Wednesday March 9, 2011
I wake up before my alarm clock which is surprising considering Will and Beth came yesterday and we didn't get to bed until 11:30. As usual, I slept in my trusty winter coat, my favorite mother-made Beatles hoodie, and a t-shirt. The temperature of my room was hovering around zero but I was nice and toasty. I wake up Beth since she was coming with me on my school visit to Rokkasho. Since they are only staying for two days and I want to take them out to eat to several places, my apartment is basically out of food and I settle for an apple and some granola for breakfast.
As 7:30 approaches, Beth and I go to wait out by the bus stop a couple minutes early. We hear the nice calming music blast through Noheji that signified it had reached 7:30. Still no ride.
"This is strange, Tobenai sensei is always on time." I say to Beth as we wait. Tobenai sensei, among other things, is famous for being a pro snowboarder and waking up every morning at 4am to go fishing. His friendly sputtering English always make the 45 minute long ride to Rokkasho very enjoyable. After another 15 minutes pass, Beth goes back to the apartment to retrieve my cell phone and I see there are seven missed calls.
"I'm very very sorry Tomasu-sensei but Tobenai sensei has gotten a flat tire and he is getting it fixed! I'm so sorry, but I gave your phone number to Rinako sensei and she will come to pick you up and take you to Rokkasho, please go inside and wait until Rinako sensei calls you so you do not get cold." Says the message from my supervisor displaying her perfect English and incredible friendliness.
After we arrived in Rokkasho we learn that we have two classes to teach today. The first goes by without a hitch. Each class has around 40 students and we do a simple activity where they have to speak English to fill out a bingo card and the first 12 students to finish their card get a Starburst.
"Is this the same class?" Beth says as we walk into our second class with 40 completely new students. I turn around to see the Japanese teacher's reaction.
"No, this is a different class..." Rinako sensei casually answers unaware of the American stereotype that all Asians look alike. Beth introduces herself to the second class, I explain the activity and things are running along smoothly. Students are finishing up and returning to their seats when I begin to feel the platform I'm standing on shake. I look up to the lights and see them sway back and forth. I look to Beth and Rinako sensei.
"Jishin." Rinako sensei says, the Japanese word for earthquake. This is Beth's first earthquake and my third. The students go silent. Everyone is sitting there waiting for the shaking to stop. 10 seconds pass, the shaking strengthens. 30 seconds pass, the earthquake again kicks into a higher gear. The other two that I have experienced were over in about 10-15 seconds. The students begin to feel something is wrong, maybe this is the Tokai Earthquake, the "Big One" that has been long overdue. When the earthquake kicked into third gear, the students dove under their desks. Beth, Rinako and I were standing there, hoping the earthquake wouldn't continue to increase its intensity. Another minute passes, the shaking continues.
The lights are now swaying rather violently. Finally, well over a minute after the shaking started, it stops as suddenly as it started. Just a high 3 or low 4 on the scale, nothing too bad. No damage done, just a few skipped heartbeats. We finish up the lesson as usual. Little did we know that two days later, the aftershock would be the strongest earthquake in Japan's history.
"What did you think of your first earthquake?" We ask Will when we return home.
"What earthquake?" Will says. He had been walking at the time of the earthquake and did not feel it. "Dangit! I kind of want to feel an earthquake to see what it's like." Two days later, Wilbur would get his wish.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Waking up late maybe saved the lives of the three of us. We spent the previous day skiing and eating copious amounts of Japan's most famous food, sushi. Since Noheji is nearly shut down until 11:00am when all the restaurants open for lunch, I take the time in the morning to start cleaning up a little bit. Will and Beth arrived to a pretty dirty apartment and I felt kind of bad so I did a few loads of laundry and tried to clean up a bit.
We woke up around 9 with only one plan for the day; take the Shinkansen down to Tokyo. There were still several restaurants restaurants that I wanted to take them to before they left. We decided on soba and a bento box lunch restaurant where you can make your own bento. The soba was delicious like all Japanese food and we returned to the house to pack up. We took our time and looked up train schedules.
"Theres a train to Aomori that leaves Noheji station at 2:59 pm, how about we catch that then we can get on any of the Shinkansens from Aomori to Tokyo." I tell to Will and Beth at about 1:00. We head to the bento lunch restaurant around 2:00 and arrive there by 2:30. We fill up the plastic boxes with traditional Japanese pot-luck style food and make our way back to the train station to catch our train.
"You guys go up ahead, I need to buy a ticket." I tell them, since they have Japan Rail passes that let them take any JR train for free, they don't have to take the time to buy tickets at each train station. It was now 2:50 and the 9.0 earthquake had happened five minutes earlier nearly 200 miles away off the coast of Sendai. The longitudinal waves of the earthquake were gradually making the long journey to Noheji.
As I reach for my wallet to pay for my ticket to Aomori, I feel the building shake. "Not a big deal. This is a train station, trains go by and shake the building all the time," I tell myself. A few seconds pass, I look to the train tracks and don't see any trains. "It's a windy day, maybe there was just a strong gust of wind." I think next. Not the case. 15 seconds have passed, the shaking has only gotten worse. People have started to leave the station in a panic. I look over and see Will and Beth standing there.
"Earthquake!" I shout as I make my way outside. I reach for my camera and start to point it at all of the crazy sights that are happening around me. The cars on the road screech to a halt and drivers get out of their cars. Power lines sway back and forth. The street soon becomes filled with people leaving their houses and restaurants. The ground has been shaking for minutes and is still going strong. Power goes out to the train station. Everyone takes out their phones to check the news to find out where the epicenter is. After what seemed like hours, the four minutes of shaking finally cease. We look around, see that there is no damage to nearby buildings and assume it was just another weak earthquake and no damage done. The three of us know that our train is leaving for Aomori and we don't want to miss it. We start to head toward the track number three at Noheji station.
"NO NO STOP STOP." We hear a voice yelling from behind us. "No trains!"
What with the power being out, we should have known that the electric trains probably weren't running, but in our haste we weren't thinking clearly. I ask him when the trains were coming.
"No today, no. Close." He says in a thick Japanese accent. As he finishes, the building shakes again. This would be the second of nearly 20 earthquakes we would feel in the next two days. Seeing no damage done, we are a little confused, but assume that the power plants have preemptively shut down power for a little bit in case there are any aftershocks. We head back to the apartment, confident that power will be resumed in the next few hours. On the walk back to the apartment, the loud speakers that usually play music throughout the town are instead issuing announcements. My Japanese still isn't good enough to understand what the announcements were saying, but I can usually pick the word "Sendai" out of each announcement and assume that the rest of the announcement was saying something about the power being turned back on soon. While walking, it is difficult to feel earthquakes, but we felt at least one more on the walk back to the house.
The bento was delicious, but after taking our time eating it and a couple hours passing without any electricity we begin to get worried. Another couple aftershocks started getting me thinking that this wasn't a normal earthquake. The announcements would continue to play, I can only understand "Sendai" and nothing else. I try to call my supervisor to get some idea of when power would be back up, but whenever I tried dialing a number, I just got this Japanese operator speaking to me in Japanese. I tried to send a text message to her, but after five failed attempts, I knew the cell phone towers were down.
"There is clearly something wrong with this world." I say after feeling out seventh aftershock in the matter of a few hours. Since my apartment is nearly out of food, we go outside to start looking for dinner. The Lawson convenience store is out of of its refrigerated section so we go to a drug store. The drug store is just closing open but the line to check out was at least 60 people long. At the start of the line, one lady adding up all of the prices of goods by hand. Since the power was out they couldn't scan the bar codes. It was up to the customer to tell the cashier the price of each item they bought. This policy is classic of Japanese people, relying on the honesty of the customer and the store not trying to take advantage of panicked people. During the disaster, it was a far more common site in Japan to see people lining up to use a pay phone than seeing people loot stores with no power.
We decide the 2 hour or longer wait wasn't worth it so we go to the grocery store and see the line well out the door. Again, not worth the wait since power will be back soon. We go back to the Lawson and stock up on some dry food and Big Thunder bars and head back to the apartment. The dark night consists of us draining my laptop battery watching One Piece, a couple more aftershocks and an early bedtime. We go to bed around 9, confident that power will be back when we wake up and then we would catch an early train down to Tokyo the next day.
"This isn't what I meant what I said I wanted to feel an earthquake," Will says. After going the entire day with no heater, the apartment is floating around 0 degrees Celsius and for the first time, the three of us sleep in the same room.
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
We slept in complete darkness with the light switches turned on. If power had returned, we would have woken up to the burst of light in the room. Unfortunately, we wake up to the raising sun rather than the living room light. Will and Beth's flight leaves at 5:00pm tomorrow so we need to get down to Tokyo.
Saturday March 19th, 2011
This morning I wake up. A full week after the devastating earthquake that has taken the lives of tens of thousands. CNN is back to covering celebrity gossip, Fox News is back to questioning Obama's every move, Japanese TV is back to showing crazy game shows. Things seem to be getting back to normal and I sit down to write this story.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Earthquake
In an effort to try to get some people to stop worrying too much, no damage to us and everyone was completely unharmed.
Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes. Everything is completely fine and we were just without power and my cell phone wasn't working so we were all MIA for about 30ish hours.
Wilbur Kan and Beth Hoel were finishing up their visit to Noheji and we were at the train station on our way to Aomori City. I got my camera out after about a minute of shaking and thought I was recording it for a good couple minutes. There were buses shaking, everyone ran from the station to outside, and the taxi drivers all got out of their cars. After a couple seconds of not feeling anything, I pressed the record button on my camera and realized that I hadn't been recording the entire time! So I didn't get it on video tape, but it really wasn't that bad, only about a 4 or so on the scale. The power went out right away so we went about 2 days without knowing anything about the extent of the damage, we thought that it was just a preventative measure to shut off the power. After about 30 hours, cell phones started working so I was able to text my fiancee and she told me all the details of the situation in Sendai and it really caught us by surprise. So yea, we just thought it was no big deal and didn't know so many people were worried about us. Luckily everything worked out well for us at least but I'm very lucky to have been placed in Noheji and not a little farther south.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks again for caring! Hope everything turns out ok!
Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes. Everything is completely fine and we were just without power and my cell phone wasn't working so we were all MIA for about 30ish hours.
Wilbur Kan and Beth Hoel were finishing up their visit to Noheji and we were at the train station on our way to Aomori City. I got my camera out after about a minute of shaking and thought I was recording it for a good couple minutes. There were buses shaking, everyone ran from the station to outside, and the taxi drivers all got out of their cars. After a couple seconds of not feeling anything, I pressed the record button on my camera and realized that I hadn't been recording the entire time! So I didn't get it on video tape, but it really wasn't that bad, only about a 4 or so on the scale. The power went out right away so we went about 2 days without knowing anything about the extent of the damage, we thought that it was just a preventative measure to shut off the power. After about 30 hours, cell phones started working so I was able to text my fiancee and she told me all the details of the situation in Sendai and it really caught us by surprise. So yea, we just thought it was no big deal and didn't know so many people were worried about us. Luckily everything worked out well for us at least but I'm very lucky to have been placed in Noheji and not a little farther south.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks again for caring! Hope everything turns out ok!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
How Studying Japanese Could Improve Other Areas of My Life
I've never been able to concentrate on the same thing as long as I've been able to concentrate on studying Japanese and I think I have stumbled across a nice concept to explain why. I have always wanted to work hard at one thing, but I always get distracted by other things and don't devote myself fully to one goal. When I played baseball, it was too easy to play video games in my free time instead of concentrating on baseball and hitting the weight room. I just thought I had ADD and couldn't focus on one thing for a long time, but actually what I was doing was I was making it too easy for myself to get sidetracked.
With Japanese though, what I have unconsciously done is simply live in an environment of learning. I don't force myself to study for 2 hours a day studying vocabulary. What I do is watch TV and want to understand it. I don't force myself to study kanji, but I see kanji that I don't understand and I want to understand it. I simply live in an environment that makes learning Japanese convenient.
I have put this effort to other areas of my life too. I have been eating pretty unhealthily since I got to Japan because I wanted to taste all the new flavors. But instead of telling myself to eat more healthy, I simply have healthy foods in the house. It's not that I've stopped eating chips, candy, tempura, katsudon and copious amounts of ramen, but I just have fruits and vegetables always available and I have to leave my house to eat all the fried meats and ramen.
I have put this effort to other areas of my life too. I have been eating pretty unhealthily since I got to Japan because I wanted to taste all the new flavors. But instead of telling myself to eat more healthy, I simply have healthy foods in the house. It's not that I've stopped eating chips, candy, tempura, katsudon and copious amounts of ramen, but I just have fruits and vegetables always available and I have to leave my house to eat all the fried meats and ramen.
So basically what I'm trying to say is...don't force yourself to do something, just make it inconvenient to do a bad habit. Instead of telling myself to study Japanese, instead I have my operating system and internet browsers in Japanese, I always have learning programs open, and there are about 30 Japanese books within arms reach of me right now. I don't have to force myself to study, it is simply easy and convenient for me to study. I didn't tell myself that I was going to start eating healthier, I just had fruits and vegetables within arms reach and made it convenient to eat better.
In conclusion, I know my dad is probably the only person that reads this blog and I have been trying to get him to stop drinking pop for about 10 years now (he drinks like 6 cans per day) and so papa, how about instead of telling yourself to quit drinking pop, how about just not having any pop in the house? If you are at a restaurant and want a Pepsi, that's fine, go ahead and order a Pepsi, but make it so that it isn't so easy to access everyday at the house. You can drink pop anywhere outside of the house, but no drinking pop inside the house.
For the one other person that reads this blog, if you've been trying to eat better, don't tell yourself to stop eating sweets, just don't have sweets in your house and have fruits and cut up vegetables at arms reach. If you want to get in better shape, don't tell yourself to run for 20 minutes, just wear comfortable clothes and go outside.
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