My Japan Is Still Alive Amid the Rubble

[kristopher]

My Japan Is Still Alive Amid the Rubble
Riva Greenberg

Diabetes advocate, author
Posted: March 25, 2011 04:25 PM

...When I lived in Tokyo I was working as a copywriter for a major advertising agency. Those years were idyllic in many ways, and changed me for the better. I became an international citizen; my outlook broadened like the stamps in my passport. At the same time, I was 5 years old again, discovering a whole new world each day: new vistas, new culture, new friends.

...I still see sales girls running with my yen to and from the register, and then presenting my change to me on a silver tray. I am forever indebted to the stranger who, at midnight, walked me 25 minutes out of his way to my train station so I could find my way home. Each spring I want to repeat the 10-mile bike ride I took my first year under bouquets of cherry blossoms as breathtaking and delicate as snowflakes. And fortunately, I can laugh now at what wasn't funny at the time -- the smiles and vertical head nods in business meetings that to any Westerner meant "yes," but to any Japanese didn't.

...My friend Yumiko sent this email about her experience during the earthquake and her thoughts:

Hi Riva,

As you probably know through TV news, just after the earthquake, some people made a long line in order to get foods and drinks in Tokyo, but people became more calm at present.

When the big earthquake happened on March 11, I was on 19th floor for the meeting. It was soooo big. I have never ever had it before in my life. It took about an hour until I felt OK because additional earthquakes never stopped....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riva-greenberg/japan-earthquake_b_838163.html

[aquart]

1. What I found out after 9/11 is that if you're still alive, you keep living.

None of the daily needs alter: food, water, shelter, appointments. You take care of what needs to be taken care of. If something needs to be stepped around, you step around it. If you have to get off the bus because of a package, you get off and walk, grab another bus, keep going.

And if you're in Tokyo, which didn't shatter and wasn't washed away, or Greenwich Village/Soho which was the first part of lower Manhattan not covered in inches of white ash, there's a sense of unreality at having such a luxurious disaster. Home is still home. Hard to believe it's so different so nearby. That you can't get on a train and go where you've always gone. Because it isn't there.

I had five years of increased asthma problems because of what was in the air after 9/11. And then it went away. Because I wasn't a first responder and the initial winds didn't blow into the Village. And there wasn't a melting reactor spewing poison into my air, water, food.

Tokyo wants to feel life is normal. Got a message like that from a friend today. Life is back to normal. It isn't. But 14 million people have nowhere to run. So thinking the unthinkable is so useless. Right now, they tell themselves the disaster happened elsewhere in Japan. That they were lucky.

Because that's what you do.

[kristopher]

2. +1

Thanks for saying that so well.

[kickysnana]

3. +1