Random pics

Here is big son, age 22 mos.:

Here is little son, about age 12 mos.:

And here they are both together, this May, with Toby!

The earthquake

I have wanted to write about our earthquake experience, though we were so safe up here in Hokkaido. I will try to write briefly. This is just to record what it was like for us up here in Hokkaido, far from the disaster. I will write in bullet form to try and stay brief!

• I was at work, sitting at my desk in the teacher's room of a public Jr. High School in Sapporo. Many kids were in their classrooms getting ready to go, or out in the hallways cleaning. The earthquake started at 2:46 p.m., but for us in Hokkaido it would have been slightly later.
• The shaking was very large and side-to-side, clearly a very powerful earthquake, and it went on for approx. 5 minutes. It seemed to just go on and on. I was on the 2nd floor of the 3-story school building. I was not afraid for my health as such, since the shaking was not violent - but it was clearly a "big event" and there was a lot of worry, consternation, shouting, etc.
• Kids in their classrooms went under their desks, but those in the hallways could be heard reacting, and the school nurse was shouting down the hallway for them not to move.
• One cute 8th grade boy was at the door of the teacher's room, and I was shouting to him to get back away from the doorway, since there are large plate-glass windows right above the doorway.
• Almost before the shaking had stopped, someone had turned on the TV and we saw it was in Miyagi. I was so worried as that is very far away, and as I mentioned, it was clearly a very powerful earthquake, even as we felt it in Hokkaido. I said to another teacher, "Oh no, that came all the way from Miyagi??? It will have been very bad there..." but he didn't seem as concerned.
• Right away I sent the following message to my parents by email, from my iPhone (I had been just about to answer their previous email, anyway) : "Hi, the pics came through great! Don't worry about us from the earthquake just now. Sapporo is fine, though it was very long and enough to scare us all at the school. My heart is still beating fast and it seems the news from Miyagi will be bad... But don't worry, we are fine!" (This was before the tsunami had even started, and I was just aiming to reassure them as I knew the earthquake was big enough to make the news in the U.S., and these things are usually reported as "Northern Japan", which we are).
• My dad told me later that it was an hour or so after receiving this email that they first saw news about the earthquake and tsunami on TV. I know from other relatives that coverage lasted into the night there, in the U.S.
• After sending that email, I immediately posted on my facebook status (about 3 p.m.), mainly to get the message to my husband's family in England: "Very big earthquake in another part of Japan (Miyagi again) but we are fine in Sapporo. Very worried about Miyagi, and a tsunami is expected there...". We still had no idea of just how big it would be, but I knew it would make the news overseas in any case.
• At this point the general expectation was that a "bad tsunami" might be, for example, as bad as the 1993 Okushiri tsunami, which badly damaged an island and killed 239 people.
• In the teacher's room, teachers began crowding around the TV as the first videos of the tsunami were broadcast. Again, absolutely NO expectation that hundreds of miles of coast would be similarly affected. The video was shocking and scary, nonetheless.
• Students were milling around worriedly, and they began hearing about the tsunami. A student told me that her family actually lives in Tomakomai, on the Pacific Coast, and that she stays with her grandmother in our city. She was worried about her family. I mentioned it to a couple of teachers, but they didn't seem to have any advice. I finally told her not to worry if she couldn't get through to them by phone right away. This turned out to be good advice, as she was not able to talk to them until the next morning.
• There was a large aftershock. The students were very concerned, again. I was in the hallway this time and held hands with a girl who had started crying. We heard that this one was centered in Aomori (about half-way between Miyagi and us). I heard students worrying that we would be next. The students began to go home.
• I came out of my daze and wondered how my children were doing. I got a text message from my older son (age 16) saying he was fine. The students at his school had taken refuge in the hallway. I tried to call my younger son (then age 11) but couldn't get through. I began worrying that he might be really scared, as he might be home alone and had been pretty scared in the past by a smaller earthquake, when he was home alone. I began wandering about the school distractedly, holding my phone. A teacher asked me if I was okay.
• I kept checking my iPhone Japanese earthquake news app, and at first it had told me that the main earthquake was a 7 on the Shindo scale, but around the time I was trying to contact my younger son, I looked at the app again, and it had apparently broken down. It told me "there have been no earthquakes today". That was pretty scary in itself, and really unsettling for me.
• I got a call from my clever younger son, who cleverly thought to call me!! He asked me, "Did you notice the giant earthquake?" He had been at school (Japanese school, 5th grade) with about 6-7 other stragglers (and no teacher), when the first earthquake hit. He felt it first and said, "Earthquake! Get under your desks!". Then the "smart boy" in class said, "No! You're more likely to die if you get under your desks!" (???) He was known to be smart, so a few got under their desks and a few didn't. The teacher came up to the classroom and when it was over, told them to go home. My son went home and had another friend with him. The big aftershock hit, and they hid under our big dining table, playing their DS's. I'm glad he had a friend with him, as he was less scared. He was also able to handle a call from my husband's sister in England, who had seen the news. Though he hadn't had contact with us yet, he told her Sapporo was fine and not to worry. Good boy!
• I was also wondering about my older son's plans to go straight downtown for a voice-recording thing that had been arranged by an acquaintance who was making a CD for her English school. I had trouble thinking straight, but had finally decided that, if the subways were running, he could go as normal.
• I left school and got on the subway. It was running normally. I was still kind of in a daze, and people seemed strangely quiet. I went downtown, checked in on my older son at the recording studio for about 10 minutes, then got back on the subway and went straight home.
• I was also wondering about plans for that night. The 5th grade moms and teacher (from my younger son's Japanese elem. school) were scheduled to have their big end-of-school-year dinner with drinks. We had all paid our 3,500 yen each (about 40 dollars) the previous day.
• I stopped by the supermarket, and it seemed normal-ish. Things felt very weird and kind of quiet, though. I was relieved that there was no panic at the supermarket.
• I decided to go ahead and go to the party, and as it turned out everyone else went, too. We still had no idea just how bad the disaster was. Japan is a country of earthquakes and for the most part, things have to go on as normal. No-one expected or knew yet that this would be a "once in 1000 years" earthquake.
• Once home from the party (after 9 p.m.), I was glued to the news for several hours. We all watched, with horror. I posted this on facebook, around 11 p.m.: "Emotions all over the place today... I was laughing and crying with 9th gr girls at lunchtime (they will graduate next Tues). Later we were all scared during the earthquake. I was busy all evening (Sapporo was okay so most things are continuing as planned). Now all at home watching the news... :( "
• I went to bed sometime about 1 a.m., I guess. As dark had fallen just a few hours after the earthquake, there was only so much they could say about the situation, and they were mainly repeating what had become known by nightfall. We would have to wait for morning to find out more. We still had no idea just how bad it was, but it was bad and shocking enough already.
• More later...

Garden Flowers and Fruits 2010

I am making preparations to start covering more topics from my hobby, family history! In the meantime, here is another project I've been working on...

Nearly all the flowers and other plants of note that appeared in our garden during the previous year, in a slide show:

http://s1128.photobucket.com/albums/m498/KDixit/Garden%20flowers%20and%20fruits%202010/?albumview=slideshow

The slide show is arranged from spring (April, here in Hokkaido) to the beginning of winter (December). I don't know many flower names, and enjoyed looking them up for the slide show! Please comment if you know any flower names that I missed - I would like to learn more :)

Most of them were planted by our landlords, and appear year after year!! A few are wild, and I planted the annual vegetable plants (potato, tomato, green chili). Also, a few things did not get photographed (by mistake), like asparagus and edamame (beans), and in other cases the photo quality was too poor (a few flowers, but not major ones). Our garden does get very overgrown each summer, since I don't have time to weed much, but anyway, what work I do manage to do is very enjoyable and educational (for me as well as our children, though the education for them comes mainly at the dinner table, as they don't like to help with gardening)!!

Nearly 5 years on...

Was thinking about this old post today:

http://twentyyrs2.blogspot.com/2006/08/komadai.html

That was the legendary face-off in Koushien between two high school pitchers, Yuuki Saito and Masahiro Tanaka. 12th graders in high school at the time, Tanaka (Maa-kun) went straight to the pros, and Saito (though he could easily have gone pro then) decided to go on to college baseball at Waseda Univ.

Now, nearly 5 years later...

Maa-kun has been (and still is) an extremely popular and successful young pitcher for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. We still love him up here in Hokkaido, and Fighters fans enjoy seeing him as the opposing pitcher when the Fighters play the Eagles.

Yuuki Saito kind of disappeared from the public eye for a while while he played college baseball (it is not followed here on the scale that pro baseball and the Koushien high school tournament are). He recently finished college, and was signed to our team, the Fighters, over the winter!! Although he was the pitcher opposing the Hokkaido team in Koushien 5 years ago, Fighters fans have been very excited to get him on our team. He is getting a lot of interest and press. He is still referred to as the Handkerchief Prince, although I think he has grown out of that stage of his life and probably wishes he had a different nickname. However, he puts up with it gracefully.

My husband took one of our neighbors to see him pitch in a Fighters game today, and we won. :) Today's game wasn't against Rakuten, but at some point we will be sure to see another Maa-kun vs. Yuuki Saito face-off!!

Here's to Maa-kun and Yuuki Saito, two nice young pitchers -- glad they are both doing great, 5 years after they were catapulted to national fame in Koushien! :)

Weird coincidences

I seem to get these kinds of word coincidences a lot lately... it's kind of freaky, but maybe it's normal (?). This is a good example, so I thought I'd write about it.

Right now, I am playing on the computer, doing my favorite hobby, family history research. I was just researching my great-great-grandfather's older brother, Thomas Henry Darley, who was a blacksmith in England. He was shown as a blacksmith in the 1851, 1871, and 1881 censuses, living on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, England. This is where his wife Fanny was from - he and his brother (my ancestor William Frederick Dunn Darley), were from Devon, over on the other side of England. I just now found big brother Thomas in the 1891 census, and, expecting to see the occupation blacksmith, was very surprised to see that he was a "Bird & Animal Stuffer". I thought this was pretty funny, and made my kids pause the video so I could tell them about this sudden and funny change of occupation. He had also moved to the town of Gillingham, Kent (on the mainland of England, near the Isle of Sheppey).

[By the way, I am planning to change this blog to a more hobby-centered blog, probably next week. I haven't been using this blog much, and might find more use for it in connection with my favorite hobby! :) ]

Back to the coincidence -- my kids are watching the movie Jumper in the next room right now, and my husband is half-dozing on the sofa near them. Soon after I told my kids about the blacksmith-turned-bird & animal-stuffer, my husband perked up enough to criticize the accent of one of the characters in Jumper, called Griffin: "What a crap accent. Sometimes it sounds Irish, sometimes Mancunian, sometimes Scottish, now it sounds Cockney. I bet he's American." (My husband is from England). I thought I would be of some use... I went to imdb and looked up the character. "Oh, he's from Billingham, England." My husband said, "That's in Kent. He's from the south but he's trying to sound northern. (grumble)" I said, "Wait, it says Stockton on Tees, where is that?" "That's in the north. Hmmm.. (grumble grumble)." Me: "Oh, wait, when you said you thought it was in Kent, were you thinking of *Gillingham*?" "Yeah."

Me: "That's so weird!! You know that blacksmith bird & animal stuffer I was *just* telling the kids about, well he lived in *Gillingham, Kent*!!!"

Husband: "Hm, very good.. " (doesn't sound impressed)

Ha ha, I had never heard of either town until today. I won't forget them now!!

Fine

We are fine, and safe up here in Hokkaido.

Still very worried and stressed out about people down south, esp. in Iwaki-shi which it seems is being overlooked still. Last night on the news they said they have many faxes from people in Iwaki, and read out several, including one from a mother of a 1-year-old with a 40 degree fever, and a 2-month-old whose life many be in danger from lack of milk. Sekkaku iki-nokotta no ni.

As far as our lives up here in Hokkaido, we are conserving kerosene (heating fuel) and gasoline, and while I noticed a few blank spots on the supermarket shelves, they appeared to be mainly very random items - probably just certain specific items whose production or supply chain has been disrupted. Similar items right next to them were still fully stocked.

Biology creative story by unnamed 10th grader

(the topic was fixed - no choice in that matter, but he did the best he could!!)

Do you know anyone who grew up for 16 years without moving or talking to anyone at all, when there were thousands of others around him/her? Of course not right? Well now you do. Hi, I’m an egg. I live in my mom’s Ovum. I’ve been in this sand bag for over 15 years now, growing up, maturing, and waiting for my chance at life. Now, thank god, I am at the front of the line, waiting for my escape. There are a whole lot of others bunched up behind me, but if everything works out fine, I wont have any of them bothering me while I’m on the move. Very soon, I’ll be making my way to the outside world, where all the walls are full of nutrition, and I can have a chance at mating. I just hope that the guys are strong enough to make the journey at least.

Oh! My protective sack, the Ovum, has just ripped open and all of my nutrition is leaking out. Aaah! Here I go! Ah! I’m out. Surrounded by my Ovum’s contents, I stick around for a little while, before being pulled toward the fallopian tube. It looks like a giant hand grabbing for me. I am engulfed, and pulled along by the walls of the tube, which look like they have hairs pushing me along. I know I have not much time to live, because my lifespan is fairly short, so if there are any males anywhere near here they’d better start getting a move on.

I’m beginning to remember, what I was told by my teacher as I was growing up, all the troubles they have to go through just in order to see me. First of all, thousands and thousands of sperm enter through the vagina at one time. Then their numbers are first diminished by the acidic environment. After that, many of them are caught in the gateway to the Urethra, also where I am now headed. The few hundred that do survive and move on still have to swim against the current to reach where I lie in wait. Next after that… Whoa! There they are! There are about 50 sperm swimming toward me. They start ramming at my outside shell, trying to break through. I can feel that a few of them are almost to me now. Using their enzyme-tipped heads, they struggle to enter. Yes! One of them is in. I don’t want anymore of them to come, so I make my shell impenetrable to the remaining bunch of sperm. Very soon my mind will combine with the mind of the sperm, Sam. I can now have my chance at building yet more life. I wish for he/she to become a successful person. Sam’s tail has just fallen off. This is my time. See you in another life.