I’m in genuine shock about the events in Japan. When the tsunami hit southeast Asia several years ago it was, at least for me, just a bunch of primitive distant countries getting screwed over, having overlooked several warnings; as a matter of fact, I’ve even gone as far as making guesses with some acquaintances regarding the total death toll (as you may or may not remember the tsunami lasted for a very long time, and the death toll slowly grew to about 350,000). Now it’s a well-developed country that’s suffering a death toll likely to be around 10,000 people, and not only that, the places hardest hit, namely Miyagi prefecture and more specifically Sendai, are the places I’ve toured most when I was in Japan.
I keep toggling between shock at the events and being able to laugh at the situation. To be fair, some of the jokes I’ve heard were hillarious: ArtOfTrolling.com posted a rather funny one, and Israblog’s court troll posted several, among them: ‘I guess now the people in Hiroshima thank the Americans for their fins’, ‘My Japanese girlfriend dumped me; nevermind, there are many more in the sea’. Someone scolded him for joking about it, saying we might as well joke about 9/11, the Haitian earthquake, and Chernobyl; I, in responce, posted a joke about each. Humans need humour to cope with such situations, just ask the Jews; this is way better than looking at the online replies some people have to the events (be it ‘Keep kosher and observe the Sabbath!’ in Israel, even if it’s written by the news writers themselves who want to stir some shite up with insane troll logic and stupid misconceptions of Judaism, or ‘That’s for Pearl Harbour!’ in the US).
Right now I’m very worried about the future of Japan. I want to go study there in a few years (Kot willing), but I certainly don’t want to go to a radioactive wasteland. The Kyoto and Osaka universities are two of the world’s top 30, if I remember correctly, and they are both in the unaffected Kansai region, so I suppose I could go there; I just wonder how useful it would be if I actually went there now, but hey, it’s Japan. They’ll be back on their feet in just a few years.
Yet what I’m mostly worried about is the people I met in Japan while I was there. Besides hotels, several people hosted my mother, her Japanese friend, said friend’s daughter, and me while we were there: first we stayed in a small community centre in Yokosuka (the Japanese friend’s aunt was in charge of it), then at a little village in the Miyagi prefecture named Yamashita, and finally in Sendai, before leaving for a local hotel and then to Tokyo. Yokosuka was unharmed, Sendai was crushed, and, while I haven’t heard anything specifically about Yamashita (well, it’s so small by Japanese standards, with only app. 17,000 people and a tiny train stop, it doesn’t have a Wikipedia article), it was reported on the Israeli Channel 2 News that several villages north of Sendai were demolished entirely. I wanted to call my mum’s friend, but wasn’t sure about what to say and decided not to; today I will.
Kot I hope all’s well.
(Oh, and P.S.: Channel 2 News, do some fucking research. Learn to pronounce names of places, and for fuck’s sake ‘Touhoku’ is not a road!!)
The recent murder in Itamar is utterly atrocious. I don’t want to jump into conclusions regarding the murderer, especially since details about him are still foggy (the Palestinians, for one, claim it was a Thai worker who had an economic dispute with the victims), but I will say that the Hamás’ and the Fatah’s responces are less than sufficient, though I highly doubt anyone will point out how true what Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liebermann said about those reactions (‘They should tell that to the Palestinians!’) to be very, very true. Meanwhile, mud-slinging at Arabs and left-wingers proceeds in full force.
I honestly don’t get why the world doesn’t invade Libya. Qaddáfí’s about to win, after all those long battles and strong support for the rebels, it’s in the world’s interest to tear him down!
Ugh. Now I’m mostly hoping for Wikileaks to reveal something that will start a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia; both of these countries scare the Hel outta me.
Unum diem...
(P.S.: I signed up for uni. Going to attend TAU starting October. Meep...)
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