March 23, 2011

• Email to Aunt Toot

  Thanks for your email, and sorry not to have answered sooner.  Sometimes it is a bit hard to concentrate with the plagues of Egypt unrolling.  We are all fine, unnerved, but fine.  I only lost a few dishes that I can survive without quite nicely, and am very glad that we had props up all over the house to prevent shelves from falling over.  People up north have lost everything including family members.  How can anyone cope with something like that? Some things are still in short supply at the market.  I tried to get past the cash register with a couple quarts of milk, and was told that I could only buy one.  At least I got that much.  There has been no short supply of whipping cream, so I had to rough it and use that for my coffee.  If that is my biggest problem I am pretty well off.  Now if I could just find toilet paper somewhere.  I am not out of it yet, and B said that I could always get a copy of that local liberal newspaper to use.  Oh c**p, there's another little quakelette.  Tried just ignoring it, but it got my attention.  Really getting sick of this.

  OK, that is over for now.  Quakelettes don't do any damage except to the nerves.  I really didn't need the couple of little ones that woke us all up at 5am, either.  This all plays tricks with your equilibrium after awhile.  I have a little plumb line hung up to check and see of things are really vibrating or if it's my imagination.  All right, it's a rosary.  I don't say it, I just think they are pretty.

   

  Anyway, Tokyo has been saying they are due for a big one ever since I have been here, and this recent quake was not it, as it happened up north.  Everyone in Tokyo is taking this March 11 quake as a kind or rehersal and is stocking up on staples, which is why the market shelves are empty of rice, pasta, toilet paper and whatnot.  I think the dairy problem was that the transportation routes from the north were cut off.  I really can't blame anyone for doing it.  We are being cautioned about overbuying.  There is no trouble getting meat or vegetables, so there is no danger of starvation.

  There have also been rolling blackouts to help ease the overloaded power company, but we have not had any at all, perhaps because we are near a train station and a train yard.  This is also a blessing.  You really learn to appreciate "normal."  I still don't really want to go anywhere from which I can't walk home.  Gasoline is also hard to come by, but that doesn't bother me since I don't have a car.  Bicycles have been selling well.

  I go to a Bible study on Wednesday and we are spending the year on Isaiah.  We all split up into discussion groups the first hour and then have a lecture in the sanctuary of the church that we borrow.  The classrooms that we used for discussion are now all filled with evacuees from up north, so all the groups have to meet in the sanctuary, which makes it a bit more difficult to concentrate.  There was no heat yesterday either, but I didn't notice until it was mentioned.  If that is my biggest problem, I am pretty well off.  They ended the session early, which was fine with me, as I just wanted to get back home.  That also makes it hard to concentrate.  I might not even have gone (it takes 90 min. one way) had I not also had bank business to take care of on the way back.

  There, the radio is off, that's better.  One can get information overload.  At least I can get information.  We do have one little radio with a generator that doesn't even need batteries.  You can't buy one of those since the quake.  You can't get any battery powered radio since the quake.  B didn't have one and the only one he could find was $100 so I sent him an extra one that we had.  Oh, yes, and candles are sold out as well, so I sent him a few, although these are really not a good idea in an earthquake situation.

  I talked to a friend yesterday whose hubby had not taken any earthquake precautions in his office at the college where he teaches, and I understand that he has quite a bit of cleaning up to do, as all his bookcases were horizontal with the contents rearranged on the floor.  Again, earthquake props are sold out.  I had one unpropped bookcase and props that didn't fit because they were too long.  Dern, dern and dern and the bookcase remained unpropped.  3/11 motivated me to get a hacksaw and trim the metal pipes down so they fit and they have been duly installed.

  I am not working at present, just seeing people off.  On 3/11 Aki and Ei couldn't get home because all the trains were stopped and stayed the night at work, which was just as well because it is too far to walk, and if everybody tried to walk home it would be bedlam.  Aki's mom is permanently hospitalized and who knows when I have to take off to Kagoshima where she is.  Did I mention the active volcano in Kagoshima?  Now that is a different one from Shinmoedake that was in the news before 3/11 bumped it off the front pages.  We have to sweep the ashes off the doorstep of her house whenever we go down there.  Screeeeeem.  There, that's better.

   

  Life goes on, which is much better than the alternative.  Haha!

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