Sendai 何が起こったのですか？
Posted by bookncurls on March 13, 2011 · Leave a Comment
It’s hard to watch a place that matters to you get destroyed. The video of the tsunami devouring the neatly planted fields and greenhouses was particularly difficult. Prepared as Japanese are for these kinds of events, it reminds me how much we can’t control. In a moment our lives and fortunes can be washed away. The photos I am including in the post are from my trip to the Sendai area a few years ago.
My heart and prayers are with Japan and my friends and family who are so connected to the hit area. It runs deep in my family. Of my brothers and I, my youngest brother was born in Japan, one of my brothers lived there for 7.5 years, another for 8.5 years, I lived there for 5.5 years. I knew Japan before I knew the US. My mom has been back three times since we all lived there.
It’s a land where there is a place for everything and everything in it’s place, people and things. It’s extraordinarily clean. Everything is simplified, art, architecture, food, gardens. Pruned, tied, manecured. There’s an order to everything, how you enter a home, how you speak to your elders.
Sometimes I wish there was more of that in American society. There was even a time I felt uncomfortable to be around strictly Americans. I always had an Asian friend after I moved to the United States to keep a part of who I really am. When something happens in Japan, it feels like it happens to me on a small scale.
But I wear a white face and because of that there will always be a divide between me and the Japan of my youth.
Snowing in northern Honshu.
A cool look out I liked.
Train station in Tokyo.
Part of my family in northern Japan for dinner. My favorite food is usually Japanese with Chinese food of varying regions a close second. Sometimes they are at a tie.
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BBC World
Sendai 何が起こったのですか？
Posted by bookncurls on March 13, 2011 · Leave a Comment
It’s hard to watch a place that matters to you get destroyed. The video of the tsunami devouring the neatly planted fields and greenhouses was particularly difficult. Prepared as Japanese are for these kinds of events, it reminds me how much we can’t control. In a moment our lives and fortunes can be washed away. The photos I am including in the post are from my trip to the Sendai area a few years ago.
It’s a land where there is a place for everything and everything in it’s place, people and things. It’s extraordinarily clean. Everything is simplified, art, architecture, food, gardens. Pruned, tied, manecured. There’s an order to everything, how you enter a home, how you speak to your elders.
But I wear a white face and because of that there will always be a divide between me and the Japan of my youth.
Snowing in northern Honshu.
A cool look out I liked.
Train station in Tokyo.
Part of my family in northern Japan for dinner. My favorite food is usually Japanese with Chinese food of varying regions a close second. Sometimes they are at a tie.
Like this:
Filed under A Comment · Tagged with Japan, Tsunami