Archive for March 2011

24 hours to go...


I don't have any relevant photos for this post, so instead you get this: kangaroos having a sissy fight! 

I'm waiting for Iain to finish showering so we can go to our official goodbye party - though there've been all manner of goodbye festivities with various classes and friends over the last couple of days, making this one seriously sad week. If all goes well, we will be on a shinkansen speeding towards Osaka this time tomorrow night so we can catch our early morning flight to Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday. We spent all day today frantically cleaning our apartment - the next teachers to take our job will live elsewhere, so there's ten years worth of detritus to sift through - and now that the place is scrubbed clean and less cluttered, it looks and feels just like it did when we arrived a year ago.

Anyway, I want to post more about Numazu and Japan and the people we were lucky enough to know while we were here, which I hopefully will - right now we are so insanely disgustingly busy and overwhelmed that all the the things I try to do have completely fallen by the wayside. But, three days from now, we'll be sitting on a beach, having arrived in much-loved, much-missed Vietnam exactly two years to the day after leaving it, tracing the same route backwards from Ho Chi Minh to Phu Quoc to Hanoi. So, more from Vietnam, soon, hopefully...

earthquake


above: a reporter wears a helmet shortly after the Shizuoka-based earthquake on Tuesday night.

We are all fine in Numazu, though everyone here is devastated by what's happening up north. On the Friday of the earthquake, Iain had just left for work and I was drying my hair, waiting for my sister's plane to land in a few hours. Iain, on his bike, barely felt the earthquake, though he noticed cars stopping and people clutching trees; in our apartment, I thought I was dizzy at first: the floor rolled rather than shook - everyone we talk to agrees, it felt like being on a boat, and it went on an incredibly a long time.  Since then, things have been pretty subdued. Mostly we read the news obsessively and wait for power cuts (we've only had one so far). A few classes have been cancelled due to the limited train service, and the grocery stores are picked clean of batteries, rice and, bewilderingly, toilet paper; but otherwise life here over the last week was surreally normal in the wake of what's happening elsewhere in the country. My sister made it here, after a brief detour to Sapporo when her plane was diverted, and I feel terrible that people back home were worrying on both our accounts, but we really are fine, just horribly saddened by reading the news. 


above: Tsunami warnings after the Sendai Earthquake on Friday.

So anyway, that's here; for anyone trying to keep on top of the news - there's always a bit of a time lapse between the news here and overseas - here are some things I've found helpful: 

sakura in february!


Iain has a friend visiting, so last weekend we went down to Shimoda. With only four weeks left in Numazu (!), it was quite likely our last visit for the time being, which made it both awesome and kind of sad. 


There is much to love about Shimoda, like its' gorgeous beaches (which I think are even prettier in the winter off-season)...


... kaiten sushi...


...also, friendly, giant sea-turtles. 


... and stray cats getting their hanami (flower-viewing) on.


Most of the hanami action was in nearby Kawazu, where the canal is already lined with an explosion of sakura. 


Not pictured: a hoard of fellow camera-toting hanami enthusiasts. 






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