Japanory

Japan Earthquake Support Mission UK

Saturday 26th March 2011

The death toll from the disaster at the last count is 10,418 with 17,072 people still unaccounted for. Obviously this shockingly high death toll will rise.

Sadly, many of the deaths may occur in the evacuation shelters. Food is short. Relief workers in Japan’s earthquake-stricken region are struggling to provide many residents with just two meals a day. Transport links to the affected areas are difficult. The weather is bitterly cold and conditions in the shelters - usually enormous halls - are bleak.

 

I want to raise awareness of a very special lady's mission to collect crucial items for the estimated 250,000 people displaced by the Tohoku Pacific earthquake on 11th March 2011.

Her name is Caroline Pover and you can find her details here but for ease of reading I've copied her latest post here so you can see what she needs and where she is going to be in the UK over the next few weeks.

Please help in any way you can.
Publicity - share this everywhere!
Donations, whether monetary of practical will be much appreciated.

At the time of writing (1415 GMT), Caroline is currently in the Plymouth Guildhall car park collecting items NOW!!

 

From Caroline:

"I was in Saipan when the earthquake hit Japan, and decided to travel to the UK, where I think my skills can best be put to good use for the time being in collecting much-needed supplies and encouraging British people to support the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their homes.

I am travelling around the UK, giving talks to schools or any other community groups, sharing my love for Japan and all the reasons why I have made it my home for the past 15 years. I hope to connect the people I meet with images of very real people and places in Japan that are different from the horrific images they may have seen and might therefore be a little easier to relate to.

As media interest dies down, the people of Japan may be forgotten. I want them to know they are not forgotten and are in the hearts and minds of people throughout the world. In addition to gathering financial and practical support, I am also collecting items that provide emotional and spiritual support, such as thoughtful drawings or poems of encouragement made by young children. Children and adults, alone or in groups, are welcome to say words of support on my “Gambatte” video (see below for the first video, from the people of Newbury).

Hitachi Capital have very kindly lent me a van, and are covering all the insurance — they are keen to help in any way they can and I LOVE them for their positive and encouraging attitude! My favourite airline, Virgin Atlantic, are helping me get everything to Japan, and at that end Garin Dart and his team are driving items directly to where they are needed. No administration fees, no employee salaries, no unnecessary costs. Garin has a list that he gets directly from the people who need items. Right now I am collecting:

• nappies (for adults as well as children)
• new underwear
• new socks
• sanitary towels
• cotton buds
• nail clippers
• dry shampoo
• face masks
• toothbrushes (still in packaging please)
• toothpaste
• children’s toys
• children’s books
• empty jerry cans
• food: anything that is sealed with foil, does not require heating or preparing, and has a long shelf-life
• cling film
• items for pets: rolls of plastic bags (20cm x 30cm in size), 45L garbage bags, Ziplock bags, dog and cat shampoo, thick bath towels, sterile gauze, waterproof medical tape, pet first aid kits, unopened dog and cat treats, canned dog and cat food, de-wormers, flea-tick prevention
• cardboard boxes and masking tape

I am not a registered charity and neither are the people I am working with in Japan. If you are not comfortable in any way then please donate money or items to a registered charity but come along to hear about his wonderful country anyway. As yet there are no efforts in the UK that allow British people to donate non-cash items to Japan. Any cash I do receive I will send directly to Garin to use to pay for petrol for his trucks, and for him to buy items that cannot be sourced outside of Japan, and I have managed to get a bank here in the UK to waive the transfer fees.

Already so far I have received donations of 320 UK pounds. Thank you to Carol Lydon, Barry Goldstone, Auntie Mavis, and Sandy Pearce.

I plan on doing this without spending any of the donated money on anything but what is needed in Japan. Because of this I would like to sincerely thank the following for their kindness and generosity and urge you to use their services:

• t-shirt printing by GAZKAZ Promotional Wear
• vehicle signage by Crescent Signs

If you would like me to visit your school or community group I’d love to hear from you. The route is still being planned but is tentatively as follows:

• Plymouth area March 26th to 29th Contact info             01752-407857 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            01752-407857      end_of_the_skype_highlighting      
• North Devon & Stroud areas March 30th to 31st
• Coventry, Shropshire, and Manchester areas April 1st to 5th
• Leighton Buzzard & Cambridge areas April 6th to 7th
• Twickenham & nearby London areas April 8th & 9th
• Bicester & Newbury areas April 10th to 11th Contact info             01635-40315 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            01635-40315      end_of_the_skype_highlighting      

Confirmed venues are as follows:

• Thursday 24th March 1:30pm St John the Evangelist School, Newbury CONTACT Suzette Pearce
• Tuesday 29th March 8:45–9am Plymstock School CONTACT Nick Johns (van will be parked at school until 10am)
• Wednesday 30th March
  8:30–9am Plymouth College CONTACT Sharon Lambie (van will be parked at school until 10am)
  11–11:20am Coombe Dean CONTACT Sara Fisher (van will be parked at school until 12:30pm)
  1:30–3pm Downham Special School CONTACT Wendy Fisher
• Thursday 31st March
  9:10am South Mead Primary, Braunton CONTACT Donna Loftus (van will be parked at school until 10:30am)
  1:50pm Farmor’s School, Gloucester CONTACT Andy Wareham
• Friday 1st April 8:40–9am King Henry VIII School, Coventry CONTACT Nick Meynell
• Wednesday 6th April 9am Waterbeach Primary School, Cambridge CONTACT Cressida Downing
• Friday 8th April
  9–11am Trafalgar Infant School, Twickenham CONTACT Tamsin Burland
  Castleview, Slough Langley CONTACT Catherine Gorman

For me to visit areas outside of Newbury and Plymouth I need somewhere to stay (and honestly a sofa is fine!), and a full tank of petrol before I set off for the next location. I am really serious about not spending any of the money collected on things like hotels and petrol in the UK, and really appreciate your help with this. It would also be appreciated if you could contact your local media about the van visit so that people in your area who might not come along to the talk could still drop by and donate items.

I will update this page as much as possible, but please do keep an eye on my blog or Facebook page for the latest news. My contact number will change depending on where I am but at the moment can be reached on             01752-407857 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            01752-407857      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Earthquake Sickness - Jishin yoi

Friday 25th March 2011

Well, here's something new. Earthquake sickness.

Not only am I sick of earthquakes (or aftershocks - whatever!) the tremors are also making me feel physically sick. Extremely nauseous to the point of not being able to eat. It's a little like finding your land-legs again after being at sea for a while.

Even Tim mentioned it last night. We feel the ground swaying but are not actually having an quake at the time. Most peculiar and most unpleasant.

Some try to say that it's purely psychological and caused by stress and anxiety. Fair enough, I've certainly had enough of that for the past two weeks.

The recommended cure is to take deep breaths... didn't work. It may well be psychological, but with me it's manifesting a little further south from my head...

So I've been chatting to friends and have learned a new phrase - jishin yoi. Jishin means earthquake (it's taken me four and a half years to learn this word and unsurprisingly I've heard it a LOT recently). Yoi usually means drunk. But apparently there are phrases such as kuruma yoi for car sickness and funa yoi is sea sickness, so jishin yoi nicely translates as earthquake sickness.

Sea-sickness wristbands work so I've been told, but I don't have any. I shall just "ride it out", knowing it is real and not me going completely bonkers.

What else?

Oh yes. As predicted school is closed for yet another week even though all the other international schools in Tokyo seem to be reopening next week. Ours doesn't appear to have enough staff left in Tokyo. But, some "good" news - they are opening one of the campuses to the remaining stoic families for a whole two hours! It's better than nothing, but not worth me coming all the way back home after dropping Rhiannon off. And it will do her good to be away from home for a while. And it will do me even more good too...

The school send "home learning" tasks for us to do. If you could see the complete and total awfulness of trying to get Rhiannon to do her normal, small amount of standard homework, you may understand why this hasn't worked at all. Ah well, it's not like she's studying for exams.

In other news.

International mail finally arrived today. The new dress for my now cancelled birthday / sayonara party is here. And Rhiannon's goodbye gifts for her classmates and friends came too - but of course most of them aren't here so she won't be able to hand them out. Something else to add to my ever-growing and never-shrinking to do list - get postal addresses for lots of people. I can't let the gifts go to waste, they cost a fortune.

Tim's work replacement arrives tomorrow. I wonder if he has any idea what he's in for? They both have to travel to Seoul next week, so I'll be 'single mum' for a few days.

I shall insist he brings home very nice presents as compensation for this extra stress!

 

 

Aftershock City

Tuesday 22nd March 2011

I've managed to drag myself out of my depression - well, I don't have time for "proper" depression any more - too much to do. I'd like to thank to all my well-wishers' emails and Facebook posts. I will get around to replying to them all as soon as I can.

And I have been asked to update the blog, so here I am again! Back to my stream of unconsciousness...

The past couple of days have been reasonably quiet on the aftershock / earthquake front, but the tectonic plates are sure as hell making up for it today. According to the Japan Quake Map I referred to in my last post, Japan's had 27 aftershocks today alone. There were two 6.6 magnitude ones both at the same time - that was interesting. Just as we were getting used to solid ground again

Rhiannon was booked into a gym camp this week, but when we turned up yesterday, it was sadly cancelled due to lack of attendees. There were just three kids - usually there are a couple of dozen. We managed to persuade the organisers to take them just for the morning and it was a great distraction for Rhiannon. Plus a fantastically exhausting workout! She's aching today and finally managed to get get a full night's sleep.

Not tonight though. Lots of tremors in the upper 5's and 6's have set her terror off again. Whilst writing this post, a 5.9 woke her up and it's taken me ages to get her settled again.

For the first time, I regret not running away from Tokyo like the other foreigners. Not through fears of radiation as there is nothing to be afraid of, but the aftershocks are having a detrimental effect on my child. However, on the flip side, I think it will be character building in the long term.She tells me she wishes her friends were around so she had some distraction and she even wants to go back to school (even though she doesn't like school) so she has a bit of normality and peer company.

We are due to find out tomorrow whether it will re-open next week... I shall be astounded if it does.

Here is my solution to one of my assumed reasons the school may not open... Even if there are fewer children than normal, I think they should gather all the classes in each year group into one classroom, in one campus, and I'm sure they can find enough teachers still in Tokyo for that. Some children are taking their GCSEs this year, but are not getting the tuition they need at this vital time in their education.

Colleagues of Tim's are making an emergency run to Sendai on Thursday with supplies for the thousands of displaced people. Unfortunately, because all our stuff has been either cleared out or shipped, we have very little to offer. But I found some of Rhiannon's old clothes my helper hadn't yet taken and an old fleece of mine. Rhiannon is desperate to help and has donated her blanket and her favourite winter dress, but that's all she has left to give. I went through my bare kitchen cupboards - we're trying to "unstock" them before we move - and all I could come up with was three tins of condensed milk! Well, perhaps it will give the children a bit of a sugar boost.

This evening I gave an interview to BBC Three Counties Radio - a friend suggested them and having listened to the show today, I knew it was not a sensationalist programme. Apparently they have been reading this blog all week *waves to them* thank you! I made sure it was recorded as I am terrible on live radio. Turns out I'm not much better when recorded. I do hope they edited out my phrase "Living in earthquake means we get a lot of Japans"... ARGH! After recording stopped (I think) but while I was still rambling away to the presenter, we had a 6.4 magnitude quake which sent poor Rhiannon under the table. That would have been good to record! I believe it will be on the Breakfast Show between 6am & 9am, possibly tomorrow but I don't know for sure.

ETA Apparently the first part of the interview will be on just after 7am and the second part just after 8am, here's the link to the station.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-12408460

Yikes!

 

Finally, a couple of plugs for some wonderful people:

Firstly, please read this amazing, descriptive and eloquent blog post from a lovely, sparkly friend of mine, Dee, a talented photographer here in Tokyo with her equally fabulous partner, Trace. It's a long post, so settle down with a cuppa and enjoy. Some of their beautiful photos are on there too.

Secondly; Lisa Pearson AKA The Mummy Whisperer has asked me to help publicise her free webinar where, for every person who signs up, she will donate £1 to Help Japan charities. Happy to oblige, Lisa!

"I’m going to do a 1hr Free Webinar for the first time explaining the Flexible Family Solution in depth; this is my 6 step process that I give to Mums to help them tackle their family’s problems. For everyone who signs up for the webinar I’m going to give £1 to one of the Help Japan charities, so I need your help to make sure that I give lots by telling all your friends and getting them to sign up too. Go to http://www.MummyWhispererSecrets.com to sign up, and please send your friends." 

And on that note - along with yet another aftershock - I'm signing off for the night.

Let's hope those plates settle down soon. Please?