Disasters

It’s crazy what can happen while we sleep. It seems unfair that a place can be devastated by two natural disasters in the span of a few hours. I went to bed at two thirty and had just logged off of Twitter. I saw the news about the earthquake. I woke up and heard tsunami news out of Japan and thought it was wrong.
I don’t know if it’s because I am more news savvy/tech savvy nowadays or if the world is just having more disasters recently. How many devastating earthquakes happened last year? I have never been on board with the 2012 hype but I have to say, I’m getting ready to start keeping an emergency pack ala Sheldon Cooper.


Sheldon judges you for not having an emergency pack.

When everyone was afraid of the bird flu here while I was in high school my dad started hoarding water and canned goods. My whole family teased him about it. We had giant water bottles in our basement for months. Even though bird flu never really took off here (get it? Took off?...sorry) he had wanted to make sure that we would be prepared if it did.
Natural disasters continue to baffle, amaze, and terrify me. I can never seem to wrap my head around them. Sometimes these disasters are made worse by shoddy building codes or out of date engineering. One of the posts going through my Twitter is that the real story is the fact that if Japan hadn’t had such strict building codes this could have been a thousand times worse.
I can honestly say that until very recently I had very little interest in traveling to Japan. My desire to go there grew slowly and was fueled by travel shows, movies and pictures. I think the thing that did it for me was a combination of watching Lost in Translation and seeing Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations episode about Japan.


Beautiful movie poster



The neon, the nightlife, the interesting food…all things that I look for in a hypothetical future destination. I also spend a summer working at a hibatchi grill restaurant. One of the guys who worked there was more talkative than the others. He was always going to karaoke after work. I thought that this was hilarious. He was so shy and his voice was quiet. He told me right before he moved to New York that he was some sort of national champion karaoke singer in Japan.
My thoughts are with Japan today. If anyone happens to be looking for a chairity then please check out Shelter Box or even YA author Maureen Johnson's site (she is hosting a contest for those who donate).

http://www.shelterbox.org/

or

http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2011/03/11/shelterbox-in-japan/