See the quakebook at http://quakebook.blogspot.com

Okay, it’s been two and a half weeks since the earthquake and tsunami, and I’ve been slack in not writing something here.  First and foremost, Yumiko and I are fine.  Her family is fine.  All our friends that we’ve contacted (including Yumi’s friends in Sendai) are safe.  We were in St Louis when it hit– and for that, I feel guilty.

I feel guilty for not being there, for not being able to help.  I feel guilty for not “sticking it out” with all my friends in Tokyo and Chiba that are somehow putting one foot in front of the other and trying to make a normal life again.  We didn’t evacuate Tokyo, we had left two weeks before it hit (as scheduled).  I would like to think that we wouldn’t have evacuated, but then again, I see my friends who have moved their wives and children down to Western Japan or back to the US, and I honestly can’t say what I would have done.

Living in Japan, one cannot help but confront the older generation that put up with incredible hardships to make the modern miracle.  These people endured starvation, bombings, privation, and said nothing, but simply picked up the pieces and worked harder to make an economic powerhouse out of ashes.  My own father-in-law tells the story of when he was 8 years old in 1945, and he had to scour the woods near his house for grasses and edible roots to boil over an open pot.  He ate grass.  For several weeks.  This same man went on  to  work incredible hours at a construction company and ended up retiring just a few years ago in relative comfort.  He reminds us of this occasionally, and it pretty much shuts me up for any complaints I may have been entertaining in the back of my head.

Now, we’ve got a whole new generation of Japanese that will 頑張る (“gambaru” – to stick it out, hold on, endure) through their own phoenix-like period.  The country is broke.  The economy was already wobbly after years of stagnation.  The population is in decline.  Japanese efficiency is gradually being eclipsed by their Korean neighbors and the cheaper Chinese/Vietnamese/Indians.  The government was never really that transparent nor reassuring, aside from Secretary Edano (who finally got some sleep).  It will be a tough slog.

I am hopeful however.  This is the first large-scale disaster that we’re really seeing unfold in real-time first-hand.  My twitter feed has been both a curse and a blessing: a curse because I am not there and can do little but donate to the Japan Red Cross; a blessing because I’ve been witnessing my friends move through various stages of recovery:

• In those early hours, it really was all about contacting each other.  That’s it.  The phone lines were jammed, cell phones turned off.  If twitter or Facebook ever proved their worth, this was it.  We couldn’t reach our parents for almost a full day, but ultimately, my father logged into Skype, and we were able to talk for 30 minutes (free!).  I got twitter updates from all my friends, and the initial panic subsided.
• The next few days was a scramble of aftershocks, sleepless anxiety, and the creeping uncertainty of the Fukushima nuclear plant.  Here again, social networks proved their value if anything but to keep small bits of information rolling amongst my friends.  The most fascinating bit was to see the first-person reactions against the western media– who were getting the situation completely wrong or couldn’t even be bothered to leave their hotel rooms.  One more strike against old media, methinks.
• Prayforjapan.jp showed a stream of tweets, several of which had me in tears at several points throughout the last three weeks.  The selflessness and gratitude of survivors has been covered elsewhere, so I won’t list them out here again, except to say that it’s a shame that many of the best stories were never translated into English.
• The adrenaline started to wear down, and my friends began to update the most inane little bits of update on twitter and facebook: “Leaving work, headed to the station now” followed 30 minutes later with “at the train station, walking home now”.  It dawned on me that these updates served a couple of roles: it reassured us (friends and family) that these people were still alive, and it probably reassured the writer in some sort of Bill Murrayish baby steps baby steps one-foot-at-a-time way to get through the rolling blackouts and hoarded food.
• After a few days, the lightness started to come back.  The Kiwis and Aussies in Tokyo started sending twitpics of the pints they were drinking, the Japanese friends started to trade black humor about what the yakuza would do with no pachinko parlours.  The rebirth was beginning.

Now, we’re actually starting to see something constructive come together.  the Libyan revolt has since eclipsed the western news, and Japan still sweats the Fukushima plant, but these networks are starting to put things together themselves.  I still cannot figure out where the money to rebuild will come from, but I know that Japan will be alright.  This is an incredibly resilient place, an incredibly warm and resilient people.  日本は回復する！頑張ろ！

If you’d like to help, please donate to the Japan Red Cross.  If you’d like to see these stories and find out more about the real time unfolding of this whole thing, check out the #Quakebook at http://quakebook.blogspot.com