Back safely in Japan

After spending three unscheduled nights in Los Angeles, my missus and I managed to return safely to Japan...

We flew out of LA on the early morning hours of 15th...

Must have slept like a log in the 12-hour trans-pacific flight to Haneda International Airport…

Connected to our flight to Takamatsu, and we touched home-base in the late morning of 16th…

After clearing the luggage and a quick simple lunch at home, yours truly reported for work at around 1:00 pm...

A series of three meetings were slated for that afternoon...

The jet lag and the fatigue had the better of me, as I saw myself just sitting in the meeting rooms, fighting the sleepiness and trying very hard to concentrate on the issues...

I probably looked useless to the attendees as I did not mutter a word in the first two meetings...

And being away from the office for two weeks, work naturally piled up...

And piled up it was... woah...

Plus, the immediate priority was and continues to be the handling of the Tohoku-Kanto Earthquake...

Japanese students we sent overseas enquire if it is safe to return, and if so, through what route...

International students have their parents telling them to return home to avoid the radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant... (I'd like to say 'But we are about 700 kilometers from the epicentre'.)

The death toll has shot over 10,000 and considering the number of unaccounted people, this figure is certain to become much bigger in days to come…

Meanwhile the number of aftershocks big and small amounted to hundreds, and there are no signs of them tapering off…

At this point, the most worrying issue no doubt is the potential meltdown of the nuclear power plants… if the radiation comes to Tokyo area, oh boy...

Besides the fatigue and the jetlag, yours truly suffered a bad case of constipation…

It had been over two days and that thing just wouldn’t come out…

Since my teens, I have always had this habit of settling the ‘big’ business every morning before breakfast…

The last time I experienced this was perhaps over 20 years ago…

This time, I must have spent about one hour in total, sitting on the ‘throne’ trying and trying…

It came to a point when I could not even sit straight due to that lump down there…

Thank god, I managed to squeeze that thing out eventually…

My suweeto haato had a good laugh...

We suspect it was a result of a combination of factors…

The different diet, the fatigue, the jetlag, the anxiety related to the quake, the cramped seat in the economy class, the lack of sufficient water intake are probably some of the factors…

On a personal level, am certainly glad that today is Saturday... oh how I love Saturdays...

My neighbor K, who is instrumental in 'persuading' me to install the woodstove, called me up to go wood cutting together...

Today, he oversaw my first tree cutting expedition...

It was an old oak tree with a trunk thicker than my waist...

Under his supervision, I successfully felled my first tree...

He then showed me a natural spring in the neighborhood...

Our area is dry and I was pleasantly surprised to see how clear the water was...

I think we will come back with some water containers to collect the natural spring water as I would like to see how the water taste like...

Beside the spring was a basket filled with several types of oranges...

The sign read, 'Feel free to take all you want... they taste quite good'...

I could see that the skins looked a bit wrinkled...

I took one, peeled off the skin, and popped a slice or two into my mouth...

Hmmm, not too bad, I thought to myself as I went back for another one...

After this, my missus and I went to collect wood from two other locations in the vicinity...

But man, all these wood-cutting and wood-collecting activities leave me with almost no time for our potager...

I really need to start preparing the vegetable beds for the spring season...

Held up in LA waiting for first available flight home

Yours truly would like to thank all you kind folks who wrote in to sympathize, encourage, and console us in this difficult time…

It is really heart-wrenching for us particularly, being residents of Japan, to see such a terrible disaster unfolding as time passes by…

On a private level, we are thankful to god as we are not directly affected by the quake or tsunami…

Our home is in Kagawa prefecture, which is situated on the island of Shikoku, the southwest corner of the archipelago…

My mother in law and relatives are staying in Kanagawa prefecture, near Tokyo…

They felt strong tremors, had some glasses broken, experienced long hours of power cuts but are generally doing alright…

My missus and I are currently in Los Angeles…

We were due to fly back to Japan on the early hours of 12th March…

But our flight was cancelled because Haneda International Airport was closed…

This morning, we contacted All Nippon Airways (ANA) and managed to put our names as standby passengers in a series of flights from LA to Haneda International or Narita International Airport.

Imagine the number of fellow passengers who are in the same position, all equally eager and even desparate to return home…

The earliest confirmed flight that ANA found for us was a flight that departs LA at noontime of 15th March…

If we take this flight, we would reach our home in Takamatsu city at about noon time on 17th March…

We hope ANA can call us up for an earlier flight though…

Anyway, at this point of time, we would like to let our relatives and friends know that we are doing ok although I am feeling a bit fatigue…

(Note: this note is posted in both Potager Y as well as Kedahan-Malaysian in Japan

Ready to head home to earthquake-struck Japan...

Am spending the final night of my US trip here in San Francisco...

But oh dear, the huge earthquake that just struck north-eastern Japan...
At 8.4 on the Ritcher scale... apparently one of the top five strongest earthquakes recorded...
Tsunamis of up to 7 meters sweeping across the land...
The immense debris, the floating cars, torn houses, overturned boats, flooded cities, and burning oil refineries...

Throughout my residence in Japan, I have never seen anything quite like these before...

I hope the damage will not be too widespread... and that the tsunami will not cause other nations much damage as it is doing to Japan...

Also, hope Haneda International Airport where I am flying through on 13th, will not be closed...

But oh oh, a tsunami watch for US west coast was just announced...
A tsunami might come to the US west coast at around 8:00 am tomorrow, local time...

Oh oh... oh oh...

On a mission in the US... after an absence of 25 years...

Am now in St. Petersburg, Florida...
Shall be in this city for a few days, primarily to meet with some counterparts at two colleges wth regards to university collaborations...
I need to get a more active exchange of students going on in my campus, or else...

Actually flew into Los Angeles some days ago...
Visited two universities there and it is really interesting to see the contrast in the running of things...

Anyway, a notable thing about this trip is that, it has been 25 years since I last stepped foot on US mainland soil...
Really, I myself cannot imagine that a quarter of a century has elapsed since I left the US in June 1986...
I had gone to Hawaii a few occasions after that, but that doesn't count, says one of my counterparts...

Being away from the US for so long, I had naturally lost touch with a lot of things...
I have lost my orientation of how far a mile is or how cool 41 degrees Farenheit is...
I felt quite bewildered at the size of the parking lots and the 8-laned freeways...
The oversized food portions, ooh... lucky my missus is accompanying me this time and we can sometimes share the food out...

My sense of distances between destinations went haywired...
Why, for Japan can fit into just the state of California by itself...
So, for many of the drives or rides we were on, they were all like inter-prefectural driving in Japan, judging by the kilometers, um, I mean, miles...

The schedule is tight, and coupled with the jetlag, it is a tiring trip...
Still, I am determined to get the student exchange thingy launched in one form or another...

Ok, need to catch up on some sleep for now...
Good night from Florida...