Tag Archives: Tohoku
‘The most photographed anonymous man in the world’
I got a really lovely thank you from the #quakebook team, despite only doing something very simple to help with the publication of an interview with Our Man in Abiko in the Embassy of Japan in the UK’s newsletter. Take … Continue reading
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Obon festivities
Often in class I find I am learning as much as the students. While they pick up the essentials of English grammar and usage, along with certain vignettes about British life, I am gaining too. Not merely an insight into … Continue reading
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Rebuilding Japan under uncertainty
It is depressing but not surprising to learn from those back home that Japan has been largely ignored by the news recently, in favour of stories of footballers doing something somewhere to someone no-one can tell you anything about. Meanwhile … Continue reading
Jishin-yoi: the feeling of earthquake drunkenness
It usually starts with a jolt. If walking or standing, I notice the ground beneath my feet start to move, or if sitting I feel it along my spine. I brace myself for what is coming, look up at the … Continue reading
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How to help Japan
Following the survivors’ stories and video footage, here is the Tohoku earthquake rendered as numbers and facts (with thanks to Michael Soron for his illuminating post): The government estimates the material damage from the quake and tsunami alone could top … Continue reading
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Japan faces Golden Week dilemma
What is the correct response when a student offers you potentially radioactive peach sponge cake? Despite warnings of an 80% drop in tourist numbers this year, one of my students, a lovely and very generous lady, drove for hours and … Continue reading
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Colder than water
I arrived in Japan with so little experience of teaching children that I sometimes wonder if they can tell that I am learning almost as much in class as they are. Many of my students are 11 and 12 years … Continue reading
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Remember Japan
A visitor arrives from home and tells me that Japan is slipping off the front pages. A brief flick through yesterday’s Times confirms it, full as it is of goings-on elsewhere and plenty of blather to do with a wedding … Continue reading
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Buy Quakebook early, buy Quakebook often!
Get your Quakebook NOW, full details are here. Quakebook is available now as an e-book for your Kindle, or you can download a free application to read it on your PC, Mac or iPad. If you are more of a … Continue reading
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Spring
Hanami season has arrived, stirring feelings of joy at the onset of spring and the start of a new financial and academic year, tempered with melancholy at the knowledge that, as with the sakura, all beauty is mortal. A finality … Continue reading
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