Graduation as an anniversary, and cookie-baking

My last class with the 3nens was on their last actual day of class, from what I understand. This was unusual; normally our last class creeps up on us out of the calendar and I'm halfway through conducting it before we realize there won't be any more.

But this year was different. We planned ahead, and I wanted to make it special. So special, in fact, it would require the assistance of those abroad. I was callin' in the pudding cookies.

Other ALTs have done cooking classes with their students, but I never had before. Mostly I felt bad for asking to use the computer room, so the prospect of taking over and making use of not only a special room, but also a bunch of ingredients (which at first I thought, heck I'll just pay for, until I realized that chocolate chips have to be imported too, unless you want to bake with mini bags of mini chips and they just don't make cookies here like they do back home-- which is entirely the point of doing a class like this, after all), and making such a big mess and deal, well it seemed too much to ask, and to do. Plus, I'm not much of a cook. I don't know any really special recipes, right? Or super delicious representative foods?

But this year, I thought, no, let's do this. My favorite recipe is a fairly simple cookie recipe which is fairly cheap and did I mention really easy to make at home. The stuff you need is mostly already in your house. But for twelve groups of middle schoolers with a big shiny new kitchen classroom, it's a bit different. In Japan, everything comes in smaller bags and bottles, and since it was a class thing, we needed massive amounts of all the ingredients. First, we put in orders with Foreign Buyer's Club and YoYoMarket variously for all kinds of things. For the butter and eggs and sundry, we put in orders at the local grocery.

I was struck again with just how much butter and sugar goes into this recipe, but it's my favorite for a reason. The special secret ingredient (which my mom mailed me, thank goodness), makes the cookies really extra soft and forgiving. A few groups were instructed to make the regular "bag" recipe (that written on the choco chip bag) since we didn't have enough pudding mix packets for all 12 groups (that was my bad), but I think the substitutions of measurement and flour type and whatever the hell else happened in the process of procuring and measuring the ingredients in Japan vs. back home caused those poor groups to suffer very flat cookies.

All in all, the entire thing was a great experience, and a clusterfuck, and it gave me a cold. 

The clusterfuck aspect is pretty obvious: the recipe which is easy at home is not easy with a bunch of kids who have never made cookies before. I tried to tell them when a pile of the gooey dough was too big or too close to the others, but having never made cookies (having NEVER made cookies, at home), they couldn't really envision it. Also kids will be kids. I too remember looking at the pan and thinking, this extra dough could be one. GIANT. cookie. Oh awesome. Or, I wonder if we could make a pancake that was ACTUALLY the size of the PAN. So they had to try it, and it was pretty awful.

Also, there is the fact that this was all supposed to take place within one 50-minute class period, which I figured we could totally do. We could not.

Given one whole class period to clean up, we did restore the kitchen to order and were able to move the cookies during 4th hour.

Thirteen batches total. This is more cookieage than I ever made on my own.

The greatness of the experience was in their joy at being able to try it, and also at my own realization that they had just been given a little piece of something American iconic: cookies and milk. They didn't even know the two went together, and were horrified to see my dunk my cookie in the milk box. I was horrified that they had never heard of doing that.

That it gave me a cold is only in the way I stressed out about the whole thing in a manner that increased exponentially each day approaching the baking project. For me, colds aren't simply germs getting in and making a mess. Well it is that. But it's something else, because in my situation, that is, my age and general physical health and occupation, I am around germs all the time. Not like really bad ones, but I do work in an elementary school half the week. Shit goes around. Little kids TOUCH EVERYTHING. Germs are always there; I don't stay healthy by avoiding them, goodness knows. 

No. Getting sick is actually the rearrangement of stress and negative energy into bad physical reactions. It is conducted through the emotional wearing out of a person which leaves the mind and heart weakened against the ever-present opportunistic germs. It wasn't just the cookies thing that wore me out, of course: there are a great many things, mostly small, but too many of them nonetheless.

One is, of course, graduation. Graduations were not ever my forte, and this year there are the added bonuses of 1: these are my three-year students, meaning that when I arrived they were first-years, and now they are graduating, and 2: this is March, in Japan. 

March in Japan USED to mean spring (finally), graduation, and at the very end, hanami. But, and a lot of people don't think about this because it is so different from the western schedule, for a lot of us in schools, March 11th was, before it was the biggest goddamn earthquake of recorded history and tsunami of nearly unwatchable devastation, March 11th was graduation day. So we all sat in chilly gymnasia and cried a little while our teenage students fixed their wet eyes on the future and took flight from us. We all shook hands and took photos and sang songs and then, while we were puttering around the office, the chairs all stacked up, people already out of those black suits (always black suits for these occasions), while we were attending to paperwork or just now turning our attention to the next two weeks of school with the other students (graduates leave early or something), somewhere after the graduation while we were biding time before the evening teacher party, then that terrible disaster happened. 

I have heard other stories, from people in other places. One girl said they were already having the post-graduation party when they saw the shaking roll toward them across the horizon. Their boss said, "save the beer!" so they all grabbed one of the hefty bottles and held it up so the shaking table wouldn't spill it. 

So kind of.. in the way that you remember where you were when such and such a thing took place, and for those of us who lived in Japan, knew someone who lived in Japan, any of those related things, maybe this is one of those things. Everyone in Japan will remember where they were when they heard about the quake (or, if closer than we were, felt it). And for myself and many, many of my cohort, it was graduation day. I was exchanging e-mails, making plans with Sagramore in Tokyo, who noted in an e-mail at 3:05pm that there had been a "big ass earthquake just now, btw," and then failed to respond to my subsequent emails. I'm not into worrying, but I wondered just how big he meant, until others started getting phone calls and we turned on the TV.

So although it's not quite the year-anniversary of that event, it is, because it's graduation again, another Friday afternoon just like that one was.

Today, I'm in that in-between time again, just waiting til I can go home and hopefully take a nap. This graduation has been extra tiring because, as I mentioned, bonus number 1, they are my three-year kids, and also my last graduation, and I can't look at the departing students without seeing my own future, I can't hear their speeches without writing my own. I can't think about "Ichinan Family" without starting to cry. Splice that with the cold I got from cookie-baking and guess how many packs of tissues I've used up today. 

Tonight is the teacher party and once again, my head's not really in the game.

Some second years, being goofballs.

Being Spared Does Not Make You An Asshole;

asking for shit from those who weren't really spared, however, does.

Today, I drove one of my fellow JETs to the doctor's office. While I was standing around thinking about how nice today was (for some reason, the air was clear but cool), how normal (I even had class today, at small elementary!), I happened to glance at the TV.

I don't really watch much TV. My TV is not plugged in to the wall, and spends most of its time with a pretty cloth over it that I got in Okinawa. But on screen, they were showing some rivers flooding, these being up in Hokkaido. And as excited as I got about the typhoon, and as amazing as it is to me that the eye passed right over our area, pretty much, this typhoon had an abnormally large eye, and there are areas that got hammered.

I tried to call the number for staying at Seiganto-ji, the first temple on the pilgrimage, on Monday, because I figured it wasn't nice to call Friday as I looked at the weather map and watched patches of red flashing over that area of Wakayama prefecture all day. But on Monday, the phone lines were down.

If you think about the counterclockwise motion of a storm, this kinda makes sense.

I later heard from someone that Nara and Wakayama got a normal year's worth of rainfall in the course of that two days or so. A year's worth. The typhoon stalled below Shikoku and dumped buckets of water on Nara and Wakayama for days.

So on the TV in the doctor's office, I saw bright orange shrine buildings swamped with mud. I sat down with a muttered "holy shit," and stared. I could see that it was in Wakayama, and I had a sudden sinking feeling I knew where the footage might be from...

Just below Seiganto-ji, my temple destination for the upcoming long weekend, there is a famous shrine called Kumano Nachi Taisha. The shrine was going to be one of the things we did while in the area. But I was right, that shrine, like that whole area in Wakayama, got the shit beat out of it by the rain. If you click there you can see video, although it's in Japanese.

MP-sensei said she'd try again today to call for a reservation at the temple, even though I would be at the elementary school. I kinda hope it didn't connect. They'd be like, what, do you not watch the news, inconsiderate foreigner?! So now I kinda feel like an asshole.

Though our dramas shrink to nothing when placed on the world stage.

It's been a whirlwind.

Yesterday was weird.

First, we had closing ceremony. There was an earthquake in the middle of it, nothing big, just little rumblings in the mountains. After ceremony, there were club activities.

Then, at noon, we had a meeting. For some reason, the meeting memos were not on my desk. I don’t know why I get all these other memos, but not the ones for this meeting, or like.. where the 3^rd years all ended up going to high school. I get a lot of stuff I hardly bother to glance over, but stuff I want to see I end up leaning over to look at other people’s desks.

So I was leaning over pre-meeting to see the floor plan of the new school. Big Brother had told me that when they built the new Ichi-Kita, he and the tea lady were like separated from the rest of the staff room by some kind of partition and that for morning meetings and such, he had to crane around it to see anything. I kind of expected something like that on our new floor plan too (building to open summer 2011?).

But no, they went Kita one better. There is a plan of the staff room, with all the important desks at the front (principal, vp, head teacher, and secretary), then the desk clusters which are much smaller.. our current plan has three desk clusters of six desks each. The tea lady, nurse, ALT, etc are just kind of glommed on to different clusters. I sit with the 1^st year teachers, the 2^nd year has the tea lady and nurse, and the head teacher is with the 3^rd year teachers. I always get put with the first year cluster (last year I was by the tea lady), so I figured that next year I might get moved over to what is currently the 3^rd year, as we turn over.

But in the new school, as I mentioned, 4 smaller clusters, 4 desks each. One cluster is tea lady plus one teacher from each year, and then each cluster is a year group.

And my desk? Oh well. There’s the staff room, then there’s this hallway, then there’s a sort of meeting room with a big table, and one desk cluster. Two empty desks, the school counselor, and me.

Sabishii, naaa!

When I saw this I didn’t initially realize that I was in another room across the hall. I was looking at it as one big room where I was far away. Even then, the school counselor is rarely at our school. I don’t know her at all. Even though I am gone twice a week to elementary, this is still my base school and I’m still here 3 days a week. Most of the time, I’d be alone in that extra room.

Which isn’t the end of the world, I mean, think of all the space! I could (shouldn’t, but would) slowly spread out and use both extra desks as well as my own. I would claim as much storage space as I liked. I could work furiously on HT, blogging, and studying Japanese, et al to my lonely heart’s content. I would probably sit and work at the big table. And I would never be part of the team again.

When they got to the floor plan in the meeting, though, Mikan-sensei stood up for me. I don’t know if anyone expected me to say anything, but a few people looked at me when we turned to the plan, with expressions reading “that’s kinda effed up, isn’t it?” I understand a lot more than I can say, though, so I was so grateful it brought tears to my eyes when Mikan-sensei said “You know, it’s really lame to put her over there all by herself, when she came all the way here to be a teacher for us and she’s trying to get better at Japanese,” in polite eloquence. Have I mentioned that I <3 Mikan-sensei?

I had written a post yesterday, just giving an overview of last weekend. Not too long after writing it, and working madly on HyogoTimes (April now live) all afternoon, and formulating a real schedule for studying Japanese, I packed up my crap and headed out. But the bus roared by when I was still halfway up the path to the road. I sighed, watched the elementary kids play soccer with graduated 3^rd-years (one of whom had the audacity to ask if I remembered his name—goodness, how could I have forgotten?) for a minute, then trudged back up to school to await the next bus, or someone heading home after clubs finished at like 4:30. I wanted to get back in good time so I could turn around in my car and come back up to Ichi for adult conversation class. Into the staff room again. But everyone was still there.

There was ANOTHER meeting, at 5:15. And this one was a bigger deal.

I didn’t know what was going on until it was. It was the official presentation of who is leaving, where they are going, and who is coming, and from where. I obsessed about this a lot last year, and all the ALTs were abuzz, wondering about the ways we would all swap English teachers, or not, who got to keep whom, and who was good, and who we were losing.

This year, I knew Newbie-sensei was going, she already got her info about elementary in Asago like two weeks ago. I knew that Mikan-sensei was staying. And I knew that Miss-Piggy-sensei was probably going; as a part-timer, she cleaned out her desk yesterday while I e-mailed and edited and waited for photos. I knew that Westerly-sensei was probably leaving (he’s the guy that’s a year younger than me, who arrived and occupied “that extra desk” around summertime; I like him, and we hang out sometimes). I was prepared for those things, although hearing them announced wasn’t my favorite afternoon plan. But there were some other surprises.

The VP, whom I just love, who is lenient with nenkyuu rules, who is good with the special needs kids and takes me along to English class with them, who always talks to me in English, and asks questions about stuff he hears in “video movies,” and who told me, on a New-Year’s card that I’m the “most excellent ALT [he’s] ever met” is getting promoted. He’ll be a principal at some other school. While I was still absorbing this surprise, they went on to announce that the math teacher (also a painter, and at whose home I recently sat for a portrait) was being moved to another school. Which was upsetting because I feel like we just became good. A few other teachers that I don’t ever work with but whom I like from afar, because they are solid and all the kids fear/love/respect them, are going too. I hardly heard the names of who is replacing all these people; I listened to make sure that one English teacher everyone is scared to have to work with was not among them, then I checked out into my own little emo haze about how life’s not fair.

Yep. My life is hard. Safe and sound in Shiso when one could have been anywhere, one could have been in Ishinomaki. One could have been anywhere in Tohoku, really, and have no more routine to be annoyed to disrupt..

And it’s really sad and scary, but in a much more distant way, that deaths are at 9737 with an additional 16501 missing (.. don’t look at that, even if you were able to stomach my Jermaine photos last year). But it’s different when they turn up someone just like you. Yeah, there have to be lots of people just like you among the missing, but Taylor Anderson was living a life just like mine at the same time as me. Tell me she was a JET and I can immediately know (or assume with a good deal of safety) that she taught English and didn’t teach English, that elementary kids worshipped her, that she was frustrated by the system, and loved Japan. I know nothing about her but I can see her at enkais, at hanamis, and under momiji. I can imagine her Japanese friends and her spring break plans. My reckless imagination insists that without knowing her at all, I know her quite well. And maybe that’s why this one person in ten-thousand hits me, and I’m sure all JETs, harder than numbers do. It’s quite a different thing to hear this kind of news about someone you know.

So yesterday I didn’t get home until 9:40 at night, having spent the whole day up around work. I was meccha tired. The attitude maybe has been, we do what we can, and keep doing what we can, but we keep living our lives too, which means we wish we could go to hanami, and we're going to go on spring break, and the school trip will be moved to Okinawa or Hokkaido instead of Tokyo. Because out here in unaffected Japan, we have to balance between the fact that life goes on, but not everywhere. That no one is making a big enough deal of it, but that it’s overtalked. So it's strange because life around here is about the earthquake, but it's not.. we do what we always did, out here in unaffected Japan, but we also do more than that because we have to donate and worry and hope and mourn too.

With the caveat that I may not actually know what I'm talking about

I was chatting with a friend recently, and we mentioned how as soon as the news broke about the earthquake, everyone back home immediately needed to know if we were okay.

“Geography, people,” he said with a shake of his head. Well.

Kind of. But who knows anything about Japanese geography, other than those of us with a really compelling reason to know? When I got posted to Hyogo, my friend Manderines said “Oh, that’s where Himeji Castle is.” “Oh, yeah,” I said, feigning understanding. I had no idea what Himeji Castle was, or where in Japan that might be. I’m sure I’d heard of it at some point, but nobody knows where anything is, unless it’s Tokyo, and maybe Okinawa, and Hokkaido on a good day.

It’s not just a question of geography. The news didn’t say “Massive earthquake strikes Tohoku region” (largely because no one would know what the hell that meant), it said “strikes Japan.”

Let's have that map again (I need it too, yes still; get off my back):

 Recently, by way of breaking my New Year’s Resolution not to add any more tasks or responsibilities to my list of crap I do in my free time, I’ve signed up a new e-mail account which I call “JET-information-gather” to a bunch of prefectural newletters. The aim was to collect info on various events going on around Japan in which JETs have some involvement, then digest the info into short lines for the reposted consumption of mostly JET alumni who want to have some vague notion of what JETs are doing these days.

I’d managed to sign on to two major regions, and then got hit with The End Of The School Year, so the only emails flooding that box come from those two sections of the country: Shikoku and Tohoku.

Shikoku is the island just below Hyogo, in the west half of Japan, and south. They were barely affected by the recent problems, although I think they experienced a very small tsunami surge on the eastern coast of Kochi prefecture.

Tohoku is the northern end of east Japan, where Iwate and Miyagi (also Fukushima – though the danger for Fukushima is now a bit more nuclear in nature) are among the prefectures suffering most intensely. The eastern side, and tip top Aomori, seems to be more or less intact. JETs there are doing things like cobbling together van runs into the deeply affected areas to pass out extra blankets, water, anything that Aomori can give. Japan has largely been transformed, it seems, into two distinct camps: those who need, and those who can give.

West Japan JETs are signing up for couchsurfing crisis Japan, inviting strangers, JETs from across the east side to sleep on their couches and floors and extra futon until they can get back. They’re participating in Man Up for Japan, the campaign to donate ichi-man (100,000) yen on payday to the earthquake relief. Most events planned in the west are going along according to plan, with the change that most events that were not fundraisers now are, and fundraisers for other countries are now being either partially or wholly directed toward earthquake relief. I have to decide very soon what to do about my own fundraiser, the spring Pepy bike ride from which all proceeds are earmarked for education in Cambodia.

…Yeah I know I said I would have nothing to report, but I guess I was misinformed about my own proclivities. I’m notoriously bad at following the news under normal circumstances. My TV is not even near the cable jack. I don’t read newspapers. I don’t read internet news either, really. The only reason I know anything is because my info-gather project is signed on to two regions, and because my personal account is connected to my embassy registry and my own prefecture’s listservs. And also facebook, and everyone’s walls. I get more email every day from the JET organization, from fellow JETs, and from the US embassy updating me on the news of the situation and commenting on news I haven’t heard.

 I want to caution you all that I’m not really an incredibly reliable source. No one is totally reliable. But I will tell you what I know. I realize that it’s scary; you’ve never seen my town, and you don’t know what might have changed. All you have is my word that the big deal today is that it snowed like 5in (wtf St. Patrick’s Day?) and the 6^th graders are nervous because today is the day they go to the middle school to be shown around. This area was much more affected, I think, by the Hanshin-Awaji quake which laid the smackdown on Kobe about ten years ago.

Someone has mentioned that the US news might be sensationalizing just a bit with what happened or is happening. I’m not at all saying they’re making mountains out of molehills. What happened in Iwate and Miyagi was most definitely a mountain. More like a volcano (no wait, that’s down in Kyushu..). But here in my little cluster of molehills, I really am okay, and I really am checking my e-mail every forty seconds (when I’m online).

I don’t think the embassy or JET or my PAs or people have much reason to downplay the severity of things. They, like me, want to continue to conduct a safe and happy life. If they downplay, they’re just trying to reduce panic. If someone plays up, they’re trying to keep your attention. When getting news, always consider the source, and what they want from you. If they’re making it seem like I am in a totally dire situation, it’s likely that they don’t know you have a contact in Japan, and want to draw more attention to the situation in Tohoku so you’ll send money to Japan, which I support, or so you’ll keep watching their news. Everyone has a motive for what they say and don’t say; that’s not a bad thing, that’s just how it is. I know you all think I’m a minimalizer and maybe it’s so (like that time I totaled the car and called home to say I’d “had a bit of an accident”), but I’m responding partly in this case to my own judgement of the materials I’m getting and reading, and partly to the atmosphere around me. My coworkers are not worried, my bosses are not worried. So I’m not worried. Try not to worry. ^_^

Japan is on a huge fault line. It’s why we have so many mountains, and it’s why we have so many volcanoes and hot springs. Japan has to deal with earthquakes. I feel like they ought to know better than I do what they are doing when it comes to that. Being earthquake inept in Japan would be like living in the Midwest without a basement or fraidy-hole. Still, it’s unsettling sometimes when I look at the houses I pass each day out the bus window. None of those farmhouses or corner stores would hold up in a real shaker. I don’t know why more buildings are not built to a stronger code.

Well, yes I do. Some people don’t have the time, space, money, etc. to build for exigency. Some people live in the Midwest with weak walls and no basement because it’s better than no walls somewhere else. Or because they think they’ll only be there for a short time, and what are the odds?

On the upside, the construction on the new school building is supposed to be done this summer (whee! Newer is always better.. I used to think old meant it was tough enough to have lasted this long, but now I just think newer means better techniques and reinforced concrete!). 

Volunteering is still a no-go, because it’s still too big of a mess out there.

The other concern is the nuclear reactor in Fukushima. Some radioactivity was in fact leaked, and the area surrounding the reactor is under close monitoring and advisory. I think something like a [edit in here: I thought it was 12 miles.. that is the radius from Japan's goverment; US citizens have been sent from 50] 50 mile radius of the plant has been evacuated or advised to stay indoors to avoid contamination. Beyond that, right now, we’re not affected. Or, I personally am not. Fukushima is kind of closer to the middle of the east coast of Japan. If they clear out the whole area (and I have no idea where they’ll put the rest of Tokyo, because God knows there isn’t even space IN THAT CITY for that city) I may have a houseguest in the form of college pal Sagramore. We’ll do a podcast from my little inaka home; it’ll be awesome.

Insofar as I want to make generalizations, I want to mention that from what I’ve heard, Japan is terrified of the nuclear. If I remember right, there was some resistance to nuclear power plants earlier on, which might have been easing as time goes on, memory and generational turnover being what it is. If Japanese officials are downplaying danger, and I don't want to think they would, this might be a reason. Also if they freak out more than necessary, this might be a reason. It goes both ways.

But as Sagramore pointed out, the mountains protect you. They do indeed; I’m lucky to be in the middle of nowhere-really.

As of now, I find the threat of aftershocks something to brace for (I'm actually making an kit! An incaseofshit kit) and the nuclear power plant a troubling thing. Mostly the plant. Fukushima is far away, but that is one thing that hasn't gotten any better... and has actually gotten worse since the weekend.

Updates

This link, to google crisis response, is looking extremely useful.

You can look there for updates, as well as donate. The east half of Japan is looking at three-hour intervals of blackouts as they take turns using power.

Saigai

I posted my last entry to the web at about the time a massive earthquake was shaking eastern Japan. A friend of mine who lives in Tokyo and I had been exchanging messages about plans for the upcoming three day weekend (I was trying to convince him to visit beautiful nature-filled Hyogo), and he added as a little addendum to one "Big ass earthquake just now btw" at 3:05 pm (my time). I hadn't felt anything and almost didn't give it much thought.


A little while later, I messaged a few friends in Yamasaki, to ask if they'd felt anything. My fear actually jumped to my apartment, because sometimes it's snowin' in Ichi and springlike in Yama. I hadn't cut off the gas supply to the water heater or anything and I wanted to make sure stuff wasn't going down at home.

I live in West Japan. The Kansai region was largely undisturbed, from what I heard.

But nobody had felt anything. I looked it up on google news, finding one article about a megaquake shaking Tokyo. But we were too far to feel that, and about halfway between the north and south coasts. Someone said the TV was on at their school, and not too long after, commotion started in mine. We turned on the TV.


It took a moment to realize what we were seeing. It was apparently a live helicopter feed. A corner figure of Japan flashed giant red patches over sections of the map. The teacher behind me said, "What is that, a river?" Not a river, the ocean, come too far in, and far too fast.

The aerial we were seeing happened at that point to be Sendai. Relentless water pushed fire and debris and boats and houses, sweeping across rice fields. I kept thinking something would stop the motion, slow the movement of the sweep, there, a river, when the water hits the river, it'll just go downriver and be a big river. But the tsunami that pushed houses into rivers pushed them right back out of those rivers the next second. It didn't stop, and didn't seem to slow down.

Teachers started texting family and friends, calling them on cell phones and asking in low serious voices if everything was alright. I guess it was.

All of this was right about my bus time, so I haplessly shoved my stuff into my bags and headed down to the bus stop, wondering what it all meant. I texted my Tokyo friend, and resisted texting my Okinawa acquaintance as I figured she'd be swamped with "Are you OK?" messages, since Okinawa was flashing all red (along with Hokkaido, and basically the entire eastern coast, and most southern coasts other than those protected, like us, by other large islands and peninsulae).

This is for the 12th, but it's the type of map we were seeing.

Then... we carried on as usual. We'd just had graduation, and we were worn out from that, everybody cried. I wanted a nap before the dinner/drinking party and got half of one before my co-teacher came to get me and take me to enkai. I wasn't sure how to be, what attitude to assume, whether to be quiet or solemn, but things were progressing as totally normal in my little town, so we ate chicken and soybeans and I got "a little bit whiskey" trying to keep up with the art teacher in drinking (I lost). We all gave speeches about how moving graduation had been, and then the party ended and everyone went home.

Or, rather, I went to karaoke to join the others who had just finished their enkai, and I was so whiskey by then I didn't order a single drink at karaoke. I sang loudly and pretty badly, and fielded worried text messages. We stopped for snacks at Gusto on the way home. Still a bit whiskey, I got online and posted to facebook again, just to let everyone know I really was still in touch, and then I went to bed at 2. Embarrassingly, it was a really fun weekend night.

People asked me to keep them updated, but I had nothing to report. Nothing changed in my town, nothing happened here this time (we had flash floods shortly after my arrival, but that was from a typhoon).

I'd had plans to go to Nara the following day for the Omizutori festival, which you can see a bit more about here and here.

I had no real reason to cancel those plans, especially since it seemed good to go to a religious festival in the very-old capital. The festival was still on, I had bookings at a hostel, and my traveling friend was still up for it. So we went, and it took forever to get to Nara (it just always does), and we hung around and attended the last bit of the fire part of the festival (saw the last torch or two), and then meditated in the hall and hung around until 2, when the sacred water was drawn, made it back to our respective overnight places by 3 (I counted seven pairs of shoes in the genkan, making me the last to return for the night) and went to sleep.

This morning, I got up a bit after 9 and went to have breakfast. There was a free piece of toast per person, along with coffee and tea. I had the odd status of being a lone traveler at this place, and I also talked to the proprietor in Japanese. I didn't really know he knew English until I heard someone else talk to him. It's literally the smallest hostel in Nara, and we were all in the common room, me getting breakfast, the proprietor sitting at the table watching TV, one (English? Australian?) guy doing sudoku at the table, and one guy sitting with headphones and a laptop on the floor by the TV. Another guy was in and out of the sleeping room where the computer also was.

The proprietor asked me about Omizutori and I answered in English. Then I couldn't stop staring at the TV. It's all they are talking about, of course, and showing. The map of Japan was still there and flashing yellow now. It took me a while to realize it meant that those areas were still under tsunami warning, "but just a little one," the hostel guy explained to me when I asked in surprise.

There were interviews with people (some who knew their families were safe, others who did not), pans of the wreckage, before and after shots, aerial footage from all over Japan, charts showing numbers by prefecture of the missing and the dead. It was horrifying. I was transfixed. The guy on the laptop burst out laughing, in his own little world and I wanted to kick him, then felt bad for being in my own little world just like that.

Because much like my readership, I didn't feel it, I only heard about it, I only worried about the people I knew or had met who lived in east Japan. I only saw what they showed on TV (which was unbelievably amazing in a terrible way). Then when I walked by the station, I threw my change into a box held by some high school students who had turned out in droves to chant please and thank you to passers-by. I saw a poster and made a mental note to give blood soon. Because in my mind, that's what it takes when disaster strikes, money and blood, and you give what you can of both. The other thing I hear we are giving is power. Kansai electric has asked people to be super conservative with electricity as we re-route some of our supply to the Tohoku region (the top part). I don't really know if everyone is okay. I don't know that knowing would help me.

On the bus home, I started thinking about what I could do. Part of me wanted to raise my hand and get on a bus (once they start organizing buses, as they likely will) to Tohoku to volunteer to help with cleanup the way high schools in Kobe sent their kids here to help haul away the mud and debris after our floods. Another part of me suggests that that kind of maneuver would not be in line with all the recent injunctions to stay safe.

Can you stay safe just by staying put? Apparently not entirely, not when the earth moves and the sea leaves its bed.

But what I did want to do was make a request to all my friends and family, to anyone who was glad to hear it wasn't Shiso and it wasn't me: please donate $2 to the Japan effort. You can do it any way you like.. I'm sure collections will be happening around you soon, and if not, collect some yourself and send it to me. I think the exchange right now is like 83 yen for a dollar, but I'll round every one to a hundred yen (they have direct deposit bank numbers on NHK, and you can give directly at kiosks in convenience stores). And give blood if you are eligible (this is always a need, but in times of any major disaster, the need increases). Thank you all who thought about me, and trust me, I'm just as glad as you that my evening was about graduation speeches and beer, not mud and broken beams.

I'll keep you updated, such as I can, but once again, what I know just comes from about the same sources as what you know. Stay safe, everyone.