Messages from Japanese citizens to the world
Our colleagues at Friends of the Earth Japan are writing a blog on life after the earthquake and tsunami. They will be documenting how they, and fellow citizens, are rebuilding their lives and addressing some of the issues that have arisen as the country recovers from its biggest crisis since World War II.
Smile a cheerful smile !
Let today and again tomorrow be filled with your beaming smiles !!
Tell us about something wonderful you met today.
Tell us about something happy you got today.
Let your smiles be spread all over the world again today.
Your smile will surely put new life into all of us !!
Ikumi
I just happened to be at my cousin's home with my daughter when the first
strong earthquake hit North-west Japan. We felt quite a strong quake and I held the kids tightly until the quake stopped.
All the kids started to cry "Scary!!"
Calming down the kids, we couldn't stop watching TV... it was just like a
fiction disaster movie but it was all real. Also one of my best friends was
in Ishinomaki for a business trip, where had fatal tsunami hit. He came back
five days after the disaster by luck.
I couldn't sleep at all that night, I just prayed things would not get worse in
the midst of the frequent aftershocks.
If I were out for work on that day as usual and left my 22-month old
daughter at the child day care....? If something worst happened at the
Fukushima nuclear plant...?
Such thoughts kept giving me a shudder and I couldn't let my child away from
me even after the day care restarted.
It was extremely difficult to sort out the information for the first week
(it is still difficult though, and maybe getting worse), however, I decided to follow my instinct as a mother and evacuate to my hometown in the south-west region!
So far, I'm satisfied with my decision to leave Tokyo for a while.
The biggest reason is now I'm free from the extraordinary tension in Tokyo.
I didn't notice that I was under such way-out stress until I left there.
Here I've got a sense of self-composure to join and organise some charity events. I just came back from the kids' English lesson and now I've become keenly aware that the smile of children always gives adults the right direction.
Last but not least at all, I truly appreciate so much for care and prayers from all over the world. Also, let me apologise for radioactive pollution from Fukushima. A lot of ordinary Japanese citizens feel that we shoulder part of the responsibility as we've neglected its danger in order to enjoy a semblance of quality of life. Nuclear is not a necessary evil any more but an absolute evil!
Shizuka
