きょうはちょっとかなしいいことについてかきたいです。それは、2011の3がつにおこったじしん(earthquake)とつなみのことです。
As I'm sure you know, Japan experiences many earthquakes a year. I've felt a few in the 6 months I've been here, all just magnitude 1 or 2. I didn't even realise that the first earthquake I felt was an earthquake, until I went and asked a friend! I just thought the guy who lives next door might be moving furniture about.
However, not all earthquakes are that little. I went into a simulator truck earlier in the year, and they set it on the highest setting, which was magnitude 7.
Still, when I heard that the March 2011 earthquake was magnitude 9, I couldn't begin to understand how scary it must have been.
Then, there was the tsunami. It is estimated that most of the people who lost their lives that day drowned when the wave came. It also created the ongoing problem at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Yesterday was exactly 3 years since that day, and I felt that it was important to remember that tragedy that happened, and bear in mind that sometimes Japan is a dangerous place to live. Before I came to live here my teachers advised everyone on our course to prepare an earthquake pack. That is, a bag with water, some kind of snack, a torch, and important documents like your passport. If there was a big earthquake, you would need to run quickly. Afterwards, the power and water might not work for days, and access to food could be limited. As everyone was reminded in 2011, this kind of thing can happen at any time.
However, we cannot just say that we've learnt our lesson and put that disaster behind us, as people are still suffering. I was in Hiroshima recently, staying in the dormitory of a hostel. In the same room was a very friendly Japanese lady, who recommended a lot of interesting places to visit during my stay. I asked her how she knew so much and she said that actually, she lives there. She was away in Tokyo at the time of the earthquake, and lost her home. She still can't go back.There are many people also in her position, whose houses were either swept away in the tsunami, or are within the evacuated zone surrounding the nuclear power plant.
There are also people struggling to get by in Fukushima prefecture. Since the disaster, although the radiation only affects part of the region, many people avoid buying the vegetables grown in the region, in case they are contaminated with radioactivity. This makes it much harder for the people whose entire lives were changed 3 years ago to earn the money needed to rebuild their towns.
One of my friends at university is from Fukushima, and she told me how frustrated she felt when she went to Australia recently. She told somebody that she was born in Fukushima and that person asked her, straight out, if she was irradiated.
Why am I telling you all of this? On this blog, I have mostly just written about fun sightseeing, or showing you quirky little Japanese things. But this is one of the defining political and economic problems that Japan is facing today. I wanted to tell you that people are still struggling in that area of Japan. At the same time, I guess I wanted to tell you that Fukushima prefecture is not synonymous with radiation, even though a lot of the news about it in the UK concerns the power plant. If you meet someone from Fukushima sometime in the future, I hope that you'll be a little more thoughtful than the person my friend met.
じゃあ、ここでおわりましょう。きょうは、ここまでよんでくれて、ほんとうにありがとう。
If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them below.
If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them below.
