Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The third anniversary of theGreat East Japan Earthquake

I'm now watching the third anniversary memorial service of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on TV. The Prime Minister Abe gave his speech a while ago and now the Emperor and Empress are on the stage.

I remember the day like it was yesterday.
My place, in Osaka, was not hurt badly but still I felt a big and long shake.

I was practicing the piano that time and felt fainted, at least I thought so. The dizziness didn't og away for a while and when I realized everything in the piano room was shaking, the lamp cords, the calendar on the wall.... and I knew by the time it was an earthquake.

I thought it must have been near my prefecture because of the bigness of the shake. As soon as the sake went down a big, I went up to upstairs and went outside to see what my neighbors are doing. I saw the electric cables are shaking so hard, and some people were outside trembling.

Then I went back inside to watch TV and was being astonished for the next few hours..... I learned it was not near my place but the epicenter was in Tohoku area, which is very far away from my place, and which meant the earthquake was much much bigger than I had thought. I felt horrified. I had an experience of the Kobe earthquake years ago and knew things would have come out until a while later.  I remember in the morning of the Kobe earthquake, the TV didn't report anything big until, a few hour later, when the helicopters could fly to the venues and we saw the disaster with our eyes and it took another day or more until we learnt how many victims we lost.

Get back to the day of the Tohoku quake, maybe half an hour later or so after I started to watch TV, I did see the incredible scene. The tsunami live......  on NHK.  I heard the announcer's voice started to shake when the huge wave (not so strong, interestingly, just so slow, I thought, but never stopped and became bigger and bigger....) hit the coastal towns and brought away everything there, cars, trees, houses, and humans..... I couldn't believe what was going on, because, it was my first time seeing such a huge tsunami with my own eyes.  I had a tsunami warning several times in my life after certain bigger earthquakes, but it never came so big, so honestly, I thought tsunami warnings were kind of just a reminder but never serious.... my big mistake.

My facebook page became full of messages from my friends overseas. I knew all people in the world were thinking of the victims and the families.

After a while, we learned the Fukishima nuclear plant problem and that was getting more and more serious..... till.... now! Many many many Fukushima people are still away from home. Some have decided to leave their home and start new lives. Some are awaiting to go back home. Some have sadly ended their lives in a place faraway from home..... I don't know what is the best way for us to do right now or for the future.

One thing is clear that we must never forget this. We must continuously think what we can do for those people, because their our people.


Monday, March 10, 2014

My senior chorus group!


I've been a director of a community senior choir for the past 14 years.
We appeared at the stage of the city cultural festival last Friday.
We are consisted of about 50 members, all over 60 years old.  We have 3 people who are in their 90's! I loved their wonderful singing and so the audience did! We received a lot of kind comments that our music was impressive and moving.  I'm very proud of them!