I am fine. We didn't feel the earthquake at all here in Kochi and were barely affected by the tsunami (we had a tsunami warning for the weekend, but that's it). Kochi is also quite far south of the current nuclear situation in Fukushima. Here is some information that I hope will put your minds at ease:
-Report of measured radiation in all the prefectures as of Tuesday: http://notice.yahoo.co.jp/emg/en/archives/np_jp.html ...Kochi is number 39. Kochi has one of the lowest levels in Japan and is even on the lower scale for "normal radiation." Even at the worst on Tuesday, the levels in Fukushima were similar to that of an x-ray. Ironically, those leaving the country at the moment are exposing themselves to a greater deal of radiation with the flight alone. (Thank you Craig and Naomi for this information.)
-According to the BBC: It is the ''breakdown of essential services'', not worries over radiation, that is prompting Australia to advise its citizens to leave Tokyo and its vicinity, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd says. ''There are problems in terms of electricity, power supply, as well as a whole range of other things as well," he says. "Schools being closed... trains not functioning properly."
-Even the people who are leaving the Fukushima and Tokyo areas are heading south to places like Osaka and Kyoto. Kochi is even farther south than both of those places.
-John Beddington, the UK's chief scientific officer, spoke at the British Embassy in Tokyo on Tuesday: http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=566799182 ..."Let me now talk about what would be a reasonable worst case scenario. If the Japanese fail to keep the reactors cool and fail to keep the pressure in the containment vessels at an appropriate level, you can get this, you know, the dramatic word “meltdown”. But what does that actually mean? What a meltdown involves is the basic reactor core melts, and as it melts, nuclear material will fall through to the floor of the container. There it will react with concrete and other materials … that is likely… remember this is the reasonable worst case, we don’t think anything worse is going to happen. In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that’s really serious, but it’s serious again for the local area. It’s not serious for elsewhere even if you get a combination of that explosion it would only have nuclear material going in to the air up to about 500 metres. If you then couple that with the worst possible weather situation i.e. prevailing weather taking radioactive material in the direction of Greater Tokyo and you had maybe rainfall which would bring the radioactive material down do we have a problem? The answer is unequivocally no. Absolutely no issue. The problems are within 30 km of the reactor. And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500 metres but to 30,000 feet. It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time. But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30 kilometres. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation. The problems with Chernobyl were people were continuing to drink the water, continuing to eat vegetables and so on and that was where the problems came from. That’s not going to be the case here. So what I would really re-emphasise is that this is very problematic for the area and the immediate vicinity and one has to have concerns for the people working there. Beyond that 20 or 30 kilometres, it’s really not an issue for health."
I'm not trying to prove anything by staying here. There's just no reason to leave. I am safe here in Kochi. But in the northeast, there are still thousands of people missing and turning up dead every day due to the natural disasters. Taylor Anderson, a girl I met last year on vacation in Korea, lived in one of the towns that got hit the hardest by the tsunami. She was missing for 4 days, thought to be found, and now it turns out that she never was found.
I love you all very much. Thank you to those who are being calm and rational about this, which is understandably difficult given the astounding amount of sensationalism in the news. But to others, I need to tell you that I honestly cannot take any more of the panic, the guilt tripping, the fear mongering, the ridicule, the insults and even the name calling you are throwing my way. I don't deserve it. I am not trying to spite you or hurt you by staying here. I am not trying to assert my independence, "play the hero," or fulfill some misguided sense of duty. I'm just living my life. And life in Kochi right now is the same as it ever was.
There are much more important things to worry about than Kochi being in danger when it's not.
Love,
Britt
P.S. My friend Alex made this video. Please consider helping the real victims of this devastating disaster by donating to earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. Even if you can't donate, please share the video, spread the word, and keep northeastern Japan in your thoughts.
Friends and family have brought it to my attention that I've been neglecting the blog. My sincerest apologies! I think what happened is that I took SO many pictures in Korea, and it takes so much time to go through them all, choose which ones I want to post, and upload them that I just kept putting it off... and next thing I know, it's August!
(Notice I have yet to post pictures from all my major trips... Hiroshima, Tokyo, Sapporo and now Seoul. Shame.)
Here's what I'll do: one massive post with pictures from every trip. Obviously I can't include every single picture, but it will force me to be critical and think about which pictures best represent the place. Ya dig?
Here's what I've been up to for the past couple of months:
Went to a cave.
(David. If he went by a nickname, there would be an awesome rhyme here.)
Learned how to plant rice. It's hard work!
Explored a beautiful part of Aki I didn't know about.
Resisted the temptation to put my head through a wall just to have something to do at work. The Aki City Office put up an Internet filter that blocks email, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Major suckfest, since I have nothing to do when class isn't in session. Even Kataoka-sensei said, "You have NO work to do. Wow, you must be bored."
Went rafting again!
Said goodbye to friends who didn't recontract. That was hard...
Welcomed the new kids on the block. We've got a good crowd on the east side. There are still more to come, but so far I've met Chelsea in Kami, Ingrid in Aki, Stephanie in Yasuda, Jarra in Nahari, Angela in Kitagawa, Monika and her husband Sam in Muroto, and Orlando in Toyo.
(Me, Steph and Ing.)
Came to terms with the fact that I'm now officially a second year. I don't think it fully hit me until Ingrid started asking me questions. Then I realized, "Oh... right... I know these things because I've already been here for a year!"
Waged a nightly war against Fred, the big, evil spider that builds a web across my balcony doorway at night, rendering me unable to retrieve my laundry. Every day, I knock his web down, and every night, dude's right back in the same spot, building an even bigger and more evil web just to spite me.
And currently, getting ready for mine and Garrett's trip to Taiwan. He gets here in a couple hours (!!!), we'll chill in Kochi for a few days, then we're off to Taiwan for a week and a half!
Oh yeah, did I mention I'm leaving for Korea TOMORROW? I don't think I've ever been more unprepared for a trip in my life. I don't have outlet adapters, Korean money, or a clue about the language other than "hello" — and the only reason I know that is because I taught a fifth grade lesson on international greetings.
It's due to the craziness of Genki that I'd forgotten about my trip. Yes, friends, the tour is over. Two weekends, nine cities, one dress rehearsal, nine performances, one onsen, three vans, pounds of makeup, lots of stress, a punch in the face (I'm fine, and it was accidental), and countless laughs.
Here are a few photos from the show. *Note: these are not my photos and I don't take credit for them. They're photos other people uploaded to The Tosaben Musical 2010 Facebook group.
(Zombies are invading the Kochi Shimbun! That's Rachel in front, Lisa M., Brittany M., and me in the middle, and Dwaine, Martin, Sean and Lisa G. in the back.)
(Lisa Y. and Ben as star-crossed lovers Ouma and Junshin. Their love was forbidden, as Junshin was a monk, and they were busted when Junshin bought a hairpin for his lady. They actually existed, their story is real, and the Harimaya Bridge is a symbol of their love and a landmark of Kochi City today. But in this version of the tale, they jump into the river and find themselves in an alternate universe/fantasy land complete with fairy tale characters and zombies!)
(Dwaine as zombie Little Red Riding Hood and Michelle C. as the River God.)
(Out come the zombies! That's Jennie, me and Dwaine getting our Thriller on.)
(Mark, Louis and Bernadette as the morality guards who follow Junshin and Ouma into the river in an attempt to catch them).
(Though the prince, played by Kenta, originally had his sights set on Cinderella instead — and Bernadette's character was none too fond of the prince either — Junshin's and Ouma's love caused them to have a change of heart.)
(Townspeople, fairy tale characters and zombies come together for the final dance. That's Steven as a zombie, Rachel as the grandmother-turned-zombie of Little Red Riding Hood fame, and Josh as the Big Bad Wolf.)
More than 900 people came to see the show, some of whom were moved to tears! ...And by "some" I mean little kids who freaked out when the zombies showed up. But we did raise four grand that will be turned into scholarships for Japanese students to study abroad! :)
Now to flip through my Seoul travel guide and commit the phrase "저거 덜 맵게 해 주세요" ("jeogeo deol maepge hae juseyo") to memory. Translation: "That thing, make it less spicy please."
Yesterday was my first taiko performance (the group's performed before, but usually on weekends when I've had Genki rehearsal, so this was the first one I was able to attend) at an event in Muroto. I made a few minor mistakes out of nervousness, but I thought it went pretty well overall.
After the performance, we were hanging around and mingling, and a lady I'd never met came up to me and greeted me as Michelle. When I told her that I was not, in fact, Michelle, she just said, "Oh. Have we met?"
There are about 100 JETs here. The black JETs in Kochi prefecture can be counted on one hand, Michelle and I included.
This woman didn't glimpse me from a distance, and she didn't accidentally mix up our names — as I said, we'd never met before. She was facing me from two feet away, convinced that I was Michelle, and she wouldn't have realized I wasn't if I hadn't pointed it out.
...Um, okay...
I've always attended predominately white schools and have often been confused with my friend Jennifer in high school and my friend Nikole in college. Now I'm being confused with my friend Michelle in Japan. Jennifer is tall, Nikole is tiny, Michelle has dreads. All beautiful black women, all friends I love to death, but none of whom look anything like me.
The majority lumping the minority into one category isn't a new experience for me. It's happened all my life, so why does it feel so much worse this time around?
I reflected on this all night and came to the conclusion that it's because, where I'm from, it's usually Asians who are on the receiving end of this kind of thing. So to hear it from a Japanese person feels almost like betrayal, in a way.
But it's nothing new. It's just that a group of people I'm used to seeing as a minority is the majority here.
When I first started teaching and was giving my self-introduction to my classes, I showed a picture of my boyfriend Garrett. One student asked, "Is that Andrew?" (Andrew as in my predecessor. Andrew as in their English teacher for the past two years.)
I've been back from Sapporo for a couple of weeks, and I had an awesome time, especially snowboarding! (Pics to come later...) Other than a few people leaving the Board of Education and a few new people coming in, nothing much has been going on at work. (Though for some reason, some of the people who stayed at their positions switched desks with each other... I'm not really sure what that's about. Variety?) Some of the teachers switched schools as well, but I won't really find out about that until classes start up again later this month (and there's pretty much nothing to do at the office until then).
In my last entry, I mentioned that with spring comes spring break. Well, in Japan, with spring also comes sakura — cherry blossoms! Beautiful and fleeting, they bloom and die within two weeks. Last night, I went to a hanami (cherry blossom-viewing party) that was really supposed to be for Craig's eikaiwa class, but Kym, David and I crashed anyway.
I got a few pictures in while there was still some daylight:
(Macro shot of a petal that landed on my knee.)
Our group:
(Upon learning I'm a vegetarian, one of these lovely ladies decided to tell me, in detail, a story about one hanami party she went to where a whole pig was spit-roasted. Thanks for that.)
I had a little too much fun messing around with camera settings once darkness fell:
(Widescreen shot.)
(My attempt at a long exposure while balancing my camera on top of David's car.)
(With flash. Ick.)
Finally I found fence I could balance my camera on to get some long exposures :)
Long exposure with a different surface that wasn't as steady:
Long exposure taken with my camera flat on the ground and pointing straight up:
A few sad attempts at night-time, steady surface-less macro:
Long exposures with my camera on the ground:
Hey look, it's David!
Night mode, no flash but brightness and contrast adjusted in Photoshop:
What's next? Genki goes on tour in a couple of weeks, and transportation and accommodation has been booked for Golden Week in Korea!
