HAPPINESS is JAPAN

Last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan has taken many lives, young and old, male and female. This natural disaster did not discriminate in anyway. Everyone who lived in the Sendai and Fukushima region was at risk.  But even then in the midst of the devastation, some lives were spared. For a reason only God knows, they have life again.  A little 4-month-old’s cry is what brought attention to the rescue workers. On March 14 soldiers from the Japanese Defense Force were going door-to-door, pulling bodies from homes flattened by the earthquake and tsunami in Ishinomaki City, a coastal town northeast of Sendai. More accustomed to the crunching of rubble and the sloshing of mud than to the sound of life, they dismissed the baby’s cry as a mistake. Until they heard it again. They made their way to the pile of debris, and carefully removed fragments of wood and slate, shattered glass and rocks. And then they saw her: a four-month old baby girl in a pink woolen bear suit. The tidal wave literally swept the unnamed girl away from her parents’ arms when it hit their home on March 11. Since then her parents – both of whom survived the disaster – have taken refuge in their wrecked house, and worried that their little girl was dead. Soldiers managed to reunite the baby with her overjoyed father shortly after the rescue. “Her discovery has put a new energy into the search,” a civil defense official told a local Read More

NHK, a popular tv broadcasting company in Japan has for the past week been only playing news on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. All regular TV programs have been put on hold. As I watched yesterday’s news highlighting this one shelter that now houses many victims, children and adults, who have lost everything, I was very moved. Food has been very sparse because of the high demand all across the country. Since the victims arrived at the shelter, every morning, breakfast consisted of 1 bread roll and half a paper cup of miso soup (broth soup made with miso paste), a comfort food for many Japanese. The soup also hits the spot because the weather has been really cold, with some parts of Japan still packed with snow. The highlight of yesterdays news that from starting that particular day, a full paper cup of miso soup had was to be served. The most touching part, all those who received the soup said they are more than grateful and feel very fortunate to have received what little they were given.  

News of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan still fills our minds from tv, radio and every other media avenue we can think of but the people of Japan are on a mission. A mission to do whatever they can do to rebuild and help their country and those in need. Stories that are less highlighted are those of people helping each other, going to extremes because they just can’t sit around doing nothing. It just brings joy to my heart to see all those who have come together because they want to help. One article I came across writes… Along the arteries that connect Tokyo with towns that are most in need of supplies and assistance, travelers encountered mudslides and fuel shortages, even less than 100 miles north of Tokyo. The shelves of the Family Mart convenience store in Kagamiishi, Fukushima prefecture, were wiped clean, save for alcohol and condiments. At the store, Miki Arai packed what few supplies were available into a cardboard box. Arai had scheduled a vacation from his job as an IT engineer in Tokyo when the earthquake hit two days earlier. He left the city Sunday morning hoping to help in Sendai however he could – a one-man rescue team. He took trains as far north as he could, then rented a motorbike. As he latched the box of supplies to the back of his bike, Arai explained that he had given up on Sendai. “It’s too far, there’s no gas to get Read More