nothing important to say

I was going home.

Yesterday I taught a lesson about earthquake awareness but most of the students wanted to sleep. So today I taught about St. Patrick's Day. The students were in a lighter mood. But many were still sleeping in class and I still (jokingly) yelled at them to wake up or come to the hospital with me (haha). But in the third class there was a girl with sad eyes and I just let her sleep. I found out later she is perhaps the top high school handball player in Japan. And she found out yesterday the tournament in Iwate was cancelled. Many of her competitors were lost in the quake, Watanabe-sensei said.

An issue came up yesterday of a Facebook "friend" scamming people to donate to the earthquake to his personal paypal account. A "real" friend confronted him on Facebook. They asked who he was, why he was "friending" everybody asking for money. At least 7 of my real friends had friended him. I heard he might be an actual living person in Nagoya, but he eventually disappeared from Facebook.

I walked to the train station from school. It was a sunny day. I felt good. Spring was near, it seemed. I looked around me. There was the 3-storey Ferarri dealership. The cars in red, black, and yellow stared out of the windows from the top floors like cats do. I saw another yellow Ferrari on the road and wondered how well they would float. Then a group of university students stood outside of their building, maybe 50 of them. I thought it was an earthquake drill but they were all laughing. They wore dark clothes with striped knee-high socks, had white highlights in their black hair, bright red on their lips. Men in business suits staggered by me smoking cigarettes. An old man with a dirty baseball cap stood motionless on the sidewalk. He was looking through the glass into the ground floor museum of the Mazak (tool maker) building. He was staring at some contraption of a car. It was a museum piece and full of stainless steel but still had rubber wheels. The man didn't move. I walked around him.

While on the train I read about the 3rd blast at the plant. I thought how stupid it is that the situation seems to be getting worse.

The Prime Minister now says to stay inside if you're within 30 km, but just the other day they were saying it was safe. But then I thought how many times does a magnitude 9.0 strike a nuclear plant followed by a tsunami chaser?
The radiation is getting higher. The wind is blowing westward at 11 km/hr. Tokyo is way far south but today recorded readings much higher than normal. I keep watching the news but it doesn't get any better. I also heard it takes three years to cool those rods. Was that a mistake? Did the newscaster mean three hours, three days, three months? But that's only if they're completely covered with water. And now they aren't. It's called a meltdown. There are probably 75 million pairs of lungs between me the radiation. So I'm not running until someone else does.

When I got home I turned on NHK World English and watched a geophysist try to explain the earthquake. He said he couldn't rule out a major quake still hitting Tokyo. But there is no telling when. The emergency emails were sent out yesterday predicting a huge quake. But it has been over 24 hours and still no major (after) quake.

It's cold today and the newscaster said it's going to snow up north. They got two grills now at this one shelter and plenty of fish to eat. But outside there were some grandparents walking around looking for the grandchildren. And there was a little girl walking around looking for her doll. She said her father got washed to the sea. Government officials talked about building up Japan (again).

But what about finding people first? I wish there was something I could do besides watch the news. Cause there's just too much information right now. I've got nothing important to say, except that I'm home. And my family is safe. Thank God.