Waitin on a friend ...

Early in the morning . Too early to be doing more than rolling over and getting cuddlesome with someone special. But instead of doing than I'm sitting at the ass end of a line that's as long as  John Holmes' cock.
I guess I ought to consider myself lucky . I can sit here in sub-zero temperature and poke away at my phone to tell you all about it .
Things here in Morioka are actually looking up. In astrange way it feels a little similar to when I returned home after 9-11. People are kinder and strangers talk to each other with an
ease I seldom see.

I finished a stint making English language announcements at NHK radio two days ago. Reporting on the numbers of deaths and missing people left me feeling very gloomy. To shuck off this feeling I have started a charity drive to collect as much food, clothing, diapers etc. that my van can hold and drive the whole shebang down to a completely destroyed village where  my buddy and his family lives.

Not too sure that's gonna wipe away the patina of sadness...  

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...and on the seventh day

I have a distant, but rather amicable relationship with my upstairs neighbors.When we see each other we bow and greet each other with a polite ”こんにちは”.　My neighbor loves doing laundry and I often wake up bright and early (The day is bight, not the narrator.) to the sound of her washing machine whirling and swirling the family garments with a monotonous rumble. These days the sound has been replaced with the sound of helicopters roaring overhead and the rumble of the earth that makes me think that Godzilla is out strolling in my backyard.
I would say that at this point in time We are not in a dire situation, we're waiting for one. A limbo of sorts...sitting around and waiting for the next big shake up, letting the worries and fears build until there is little left but desperation, anger and frustration at our inability to go back to a time before the earth shook us. When things were at their worst I had adrenaline to keep me goin. Now, like my van, I am running on empty. A feeling of more than just mild annoyance overcomes me when I hear people complain about what should or should not be done. It has only been a week and the trains are starting to roll, the highways are opening and relief supplies are starting to arrive. The ability and swiftness of the Japanese government to deal with not only a natural disaster of immense scale, but also to avert a nuclear catastrophe, is nothing less than astounding.
Tomorrow morning, but not too early in the day. I hope to once again hear the rumble and roar of the washing machine doing what it was built to do. It'll mean that we are getting that much closer to doing what we were meant to do too.

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大地震

I was fortunate.
So much more lucky than the thousands of those who perished and the hundreds of thousands who still have not returned to their homes. The people living in the coastal cities have suffered a devastating force of nature that makes me feel awful, just plain sad.
Sitting in the dark, without any connection to the outside world, I had no idea what the people in those towns were going through. My biggest worries were getting my staff back safely to their families and making sure I had enough water, cigarettes and booze to last me through the catastrophe. Yes there was a moment during the five long minutes of the initial shock when I truly believed that the building I was in would not stand up to the quake that assaulted it, but never in my wildest imagination could I have pictured the things I saw on my TV once power was restored to my neighborhood.
Water, roiling and black, ugly and unforgiving, smashing through homes. Cars and boats, animals and people carried miles inland and strewn about; deposited like so much detritus across the land.
There are friends who still haven't made contact and we are quite worried about them....
I look back at my journal and I feel somewhat ashamed. My greatest worry was getting enough electricity to charge my phone so I could let my sister know I was still alive and stay in touch with the people who are important to me. I worried that I couldn't get bread or eggs or clean water to drink. I thought selfishly about these things when there were others who were going through a hell that still holds them in it's grip.

The shocks still occur and I still fear that large temblors will shake us, but I feel lucky.
Lucky that my wife is safe and our friends are warm and that I can sit here and write these words on my computer. We are not out of the woods quite yet..... I will post again soon.

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