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Edited on Sat Mar-12-11 11:45 AM by lostnfound
I've walked in the snow in Hokkaido with my sister. I've eaten crunchy shrimp heads fresh from the chef in Tokyo. I've walked through shrines in Kyoto. I've visited the poignant shrine at Nikko, more than once. I've had the honor of sharing a New Year's meal fit for a king, and staying with a family in their home. I've taken a thousand pictures of my son in front of shinkansens, because he loves riding "the fastest train". I've noticed how sparkling clean they keep everything, even the garbage trucks.
I would be flying there right NOW, TODAY, for a ten day trip that I would have wished were a whole season, were it not for this devastating "act of God". I had it all planned, in a way that I never plan. Was it wrong to cancel the trip when the loss of tourism is one of the many great losses following most disasters? No, I think it would be wrong to take up space, to get in the way, when the Japanese people need to get to their homes.
I love Japan.
It is a country with simple beauty in so many places, whose people were kind to this visitor at every turn. Their culture is so EARNEST. "Gamen, shinasai!" Persevere! Do not give up!
My Japanese friend says that in Japan he grew up with a saying that there are four things to fear: "jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyajin". "Earthquake, lightning, fire, and your father".
I watch them now on JapanTV / NHK, and interspersed between video of massive walls of water destroying small towns -- walls of water that look like Class V rapids, but a mile wide -- are scenes of an unarmed army spreading out to help the people, and water being delivered in thin plastic baggies (how smart they are to use those, which can be filled on site and are designed to prevent contamination), and the banks are announcing how they can give you cash even if you've lost all your identification (if you can prove who you are by the information you know, your personal information, they will give you 100,000 yen even though you don't have any identification). THe NHK scenes shows piles of cars and small airplanes that look like a children's toy box spilling over with 'hot wheels' and toy planes. It shows a long stretch of railway track dangling like a mile long rope from the edge of a cliff. It shows a grandmother saying that she was able to save her two grandchildren and escape the oncoming tsunami, but she did not know where the rest of her family was. "Shinpai shimasu", she said. "I am worried".
I am so sad of heart to see it.
I also think about the ridiculous, naiive, self-serving ideology in the U.S. which claims to see each individual exclusively as standing on their own feet, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, no community effort worthwhile, only unrestrained greed, only individual choices, no collective effort, no need for government to do anything to help anyone, let's privatize the whole dang country and let the market sort it out. Such blindness isn't possible for a people who live on a mountainous volcanic string of islands that sits at the edge of major fault lines that can experience tidal waves of this enormity. In the midst of this devastation, it is obvious that there are times when we must rely on each other and that government services most certainly are valuable and necessary.
Their language, especially written, is fascinating. (In someways, Yoda speaks like a Japanese -- he ends his sentences with verbs.) Japan, beautiful country it is. Japan, persevere you must. Your American friends, heartbroken we are. Gamen shinasai.
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