February 8, 2012 by amanda
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom – Trailer (2012 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE) from Tsunami Blossom on Vimeo.
Hard to believe that almost a year has passed.
The people of the disaster areas continue to inspire and humble me. I hope I can do more to help them this year.
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February 6, 2012 by amanda
KYOTO, FALL 2009
A long time ago, I went to Kyoto for a little while.
It had been a few months since I had arrived in Iwate, and I was still new at… everything. I was still nervous about screwing up, about being not good enough, about being a little loser who wouldn’t make any friends. I was shy and withdrawn and hadn’t quite warmed up to cold, bitter Iwate. It wasn’t as easy, this time around. It wasn’t like being enveloped in a warm, English bubble called International House. It was like standing on a precipice called Adulthood, and I still couldn’t believe that all that had been my life up to that point was now done.
Even if I had been yearning to be back in Japan for a whole year, now that I was here, truly on my own, it wasn’t quite what I had imagined it would be. Well, I had imagined I would be a gaijin talent on Fuji TV in my college fever dreams, so there had to be quite a bit of a step down from that.
What I wanted was to start right where I had been. What I wanted was to continue that magical year where I had been free, crazy, selfish, and true. I wanted to pick up where I had started. Even as I said I was “glad” to be stationed far away from Kyoto, “so I would make more friends,” in the deepest corner of my heart, I really wished that I could have been the Kyoto City CIR. That was my city. Those were my roads, those were my well-worn paths. Even if I would be forever far away from Ritsumeikan and the ping pong circle, at least I could visit and, for one glorious week, live my life the way it was supposed to be, in my mind.
Kyoto would welcome me back. Kyoto would never change.
But I knew it once I stood in front of that old International House, on a humid day with too much sun. A building was now standing in front of my old window, where I used to look outside at the small flower field. Clothes were hanging outside. The name plaque still gleamed bronze, and the river still gurgled nearby. But this was no longer the house where I lived, no longer the house where Margaret, or Shizuka, or Amber, or Robin, or Dana lived. Not the house where Misha and Weiming would visit. It was another student’s house now, another student’s dream, and I was a stranger now, standing outside a concrete wall.
Maybe Mrs. Yamazaki still tended the flowers outside, but I didn’t have the heart to knock on the door and ask.
Category boyz, japan, jet, navel-gazing, running | Tags: | 2 Comments
January 30, 2012 by amanda
I got a new phone the other day! I had been thinking of an iphone, but the infobar by au was just so … cute.
(figures, a dumb girl goes and picks a phone based on its “cuteness”)
I know I’ve been really absent lately! And I intend to rectify that – but I just need to wait on a couple things first. It’s been nice to take a break though, so hopefully I can jump back on the wagon soon. Should be back in the next week or two.
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January 18, 2012 by amanda
Hey guys, posts will be back soon! January has been busy, and I wanted a little break from blogging.
Already, this year I’ve gone from New Jersey, to Tennessee, back to Morioka, to Tokyo, to Yokohama, to Shiga, a quick trip to Kyoto, and now on to Ishigaki Island.
Shall it be the Year of Amanda, or…?
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December 29, 2011 by amanda
I was in the post office, mailing off some of my New Year’s cards. I was kind of hesitant about making them again this year – sadly, the only reason I started the tradition in the first place was to have a convenient way to tell Junya how much I cared about him and our friendship, all syrupy and sweet and saccharine. There really wasn’t a reason for that anymore, yet I found myself wanting to write them anyway. It was my tradition after all, and I would have felt odd not doing it. I mean, my second calling in life is that of Brown-noser so it’s only natural that I pain-stakingly fill out New Year’s cards for everyone and their mother.
There were only a few that I was actually sending by mail, like a good Yamato Nadeshiko is supposed to do, so the post office will deliver them exactly on the 1st, and because I had to leave most of the back for writing addresses, I couldn’t fit much of a message to begin with. It was for the best after all. Junya’s, along with the other guys who now lived on the coast, only had a perfunctory, simple message, printed small enough that you could say a hobbit had wrote it. I was satisfied with that. A wise friend of mine told me once that perhaps I had just put too much pressure on him – that the things I had wanted from one boy were too much to expect from anyone. And while it’s tough to look at yourself and realize you are just one big gaping maw, seeking attention from anyone and anything, I had to admit he was right. So this, a simple message saying, “Good new year, and good luck,” seemed about the most perfect thing to say.
I could have just not sent him one, but that would have seemed wrong.
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December 20, 2011 by amanda
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December 16, 2011 by amanda
My new year’s cards… only a bit less than half finished. Every year my list practically doubles!
(This is a sign that I should maybe stop being such a suck-up :D)
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December 14, 2011 by amanda
The “Disappearance” – something that strikes a different town every thirty years. The townspeople are “lost,” simply vanishing into thin air. How do the people who are left behind go on with their daily lives, holding on to such a sense of such loss? What do they hope for? These are the people who have lost someone precious to them. These are the stories of people who have lost the place they could go home to. The people whose lives have been turned upside down by the “Disappearance” gather at the “Lost Town” Tsukigase as if they are guided by fate. Can they somehow stop the Disappearance? Can they overcome their grief? A long-form novel that depicts the connections between people that transcend time.
“”It kinda feels like if I took your picture, you’d disappear into thin air.”
“Disappear?”
This deeply shook Keiko-san, who knew she should have been lost a long time ago. Was that how he thought of things?
He gazed at her intently. Almost as if he was trying to prevent her from disappearing. Without thinking, she checked to see if she was still there.
There she was, standing there. This feeling, this sense of existing, was so ephemeral. The vast expanse of ocean was before her, and she didn’t even feel like it would be strange if such a small existence as herself were to just disappear.
She thought of the people of the town of Kuratsuji who disappeared instead of her, and the people of Tsukigase, whose disappearance she couldn’t prevent. She might have been one of them, people who disappeared without a trace, without a reason.
“I don’t care even if I do disappear.” The words came naturally. “All people are eventually lost. It could happen right now, this very moment. And it’s something that no one can prevent.”
Wakisaka-san shook his head violently, as if he didn’t want to accept it.
“Are you… Are you going to disappear in front of my eyes too?”
His voice sounded as if it was wrenched out of the deepest crevices of his soul. It took her breath away. It seemed like there was something wet trailing down his cheek. … Tears?
As soon as the thought came to her, she too noticed a cold sensation on her cheeks.”
– “Ushinawareta Machi (A Town Lost)” by Misaki Aki
This book is super long (500 pages) and full of strange, difficult terminology, but I’m so glad I picked it up. All of the protagonists are girls! And they’re all pretty independent and awesome! And the story is a real page-turner (or as much as it can be while I’m handicapped by the moon language). I guess it really did take a story that wasn’t about romance or school children to get me. I mean, there IS ROMANCE but because it’s not the focus, it doesn’t make me want to rip out pages or my hair or anything. I mean, I’ll tell you what, even though I’m a little less than halfway through, I’d say this is probably my favorite Japanese novel so far. We’ll see if it can keep that up though – Japanese stories have a tend to ruin everything in the ending. Heck, it’s not a national thing; I find American stories do this too. But, well, anyway, if I manage to read 500 pages and then get a shitty ending I’m just going to throw the book in the bathtub for real this time.
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December 12, 2011 by amanda
The beautiful wedding of one of my very good friends this weekend.
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December 9, 2011 by amanda
Yamada Town, Iwate Coast
Nine months.
I went to the coast recently for work; there were a delegation of Europeans here to donate money to child care facilities that were destroyed by the tsunami. I hadn’t been to the coast since April, since Monty. I hadn’t been ready. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. It hurt too much to see. But we all must face our fears eventually.
What was so surprising was how clean everything was. Only the scattered rubble of the foundations of buildings were left where the tsunami had swallowed towns whole. All of the debris – no, not debris, but the remains of the people who lived here – had been cleared away. If you hadn’t known a tsunami had come, you might have thought it was just urban decay, people moving away, towns slowly dying. But the towns on the Sanriku coast had already been dying before the disaster; children growing up and leaving for better opportunities, populations greying and fading, businesses slowly losing their strength. The tsunami had just been a swift end to all of that.
And yet. The people are so committed to rebuilding what they had lost. Maybe not in the same exact space – because a tsunami will come again, and again, and again, just as it has for millenia – but this is their home land. Furusato. It’s so easy for us to tell survivors to move inland and restart their lives. People have roots, and history. Even if a tsunami buries a life, a livelihood, at the bottom of the ocean, memories don’t easily fade. I saw it in the eyes of the people we talked with. It had been nine months of sadness and horror, and of quiet grace. It was not a question. Even if it took their entire lives, they were going to rebuild.
It was grey, and cold, but the children of the coast were just as energetic as ever. In the end, this tsunami will just be a story in their lives. A major story, a story they will never forget, but a story to be moved on from nonetheless. They waved goodbye to us as we drove away, and I thought, these are the children who are going to rebuild. And I just hope I can do whatever possible to help that.
Category tohoku quake 2011 | Tags: | 1 Comment
