Mon cœur est au Japon

Though it’s not exactly related to my travels in the slightest, I’d like to talk a little about todays events.

When I got home from class today, the first thing Jon and I noticed on Facebook was something about an earthquake in Japan, accompanied by a towering 27-foot tsunami.  My heart immediately sank.

I lived in Japan for just short of five years, and know all to well the horrors of an earthquake.  Though I recall feeling small tremors almost daily, I do recall the Kobe Earthquake of 1995 and its aftershocks.  Now, I lived at Misawa Air Force Base, over 700 miles from Kobe, and was scared out of my mind about what was going to happen mid-quake, and that was only a 6.8 on the Moment Magnitude Scale.  I can’t even imagine was an 8.9 would feel like, or the damage that would ensue, or the number of deaths we should expect to see during its aftermath.  I can’t even fathom was a tsunami is like, and consider myself lucky that during my five years there I never experienced one.  Another sobering though, as awful as this may sound, I am beyond relieved that Jon and I opted to come to France, rather than go to Japan.

I have faith in Japan, and its ability to pull through this.  The Japanese are strong- hardened by their experiences, and armed with the best earthquake science to date.  They will rebuild, better than before.  They will prevail, they always do.

I did do a little bit of searching and found that all US Military bases in Japan (including Misawa AB near Misawa City, Yokota AB just outside of Tokyo, and Kadena AB of Okinawa) are okay, and are on stand-by, ready to provide relief to the Japanese government, Hawaii and the Pacific coastal areas of the US, as well as our Pacific territories.

If you would like to donate to the relief efforts in Japan, I found this list of ways you can help.

 

On a lighter note, here in France things have been fairly laid back.  The closing ceremony for Carnival proved to be a royal waste of our time, and caused us to miss out on a good view of the burning of the King.  Had I known the ceremony wasn’t anything entertaining, we would have just camped out by the beach for a few hours so we can see it.  Jon was bummed, he really wanted pictures.  We saw the top of the flames from several yards away, and with in two minutes the fire was out.  They did make up for their lame ceremony with a wonderful fireworks show, complete with music and all.  It was really very nice.  My camera died again, but that proved to be okay after looking at my pictures, because not a single one of them were even close to salvageable.  Oh well.

Today we finally went shopping.  I went out searching for a new pair of shoes, a scarf and mascara, and came home with a scarf, mascara and lip gloss.  I consider it a semi-successful day.  Plus that means I just get to go shopping for shoes again!

Until next time, bonne nuit!