Sunday in Toritsudaigaku - returning to "normal"

Radiation levels in Tokyo over the last 24 hours: normal. The 150+ firemen who've been spraying the reactors appeared on TV this morning exhausted and emotional and justly proud of each other. It looks like they have been successful in turning the tide and keeping us all safe.  Crews in Iwate  have started work on temporary housing for displaced persons. Local TV stations have reverted to showing the world's weirdest variety shows and reruns of 70s samurai movies, instead of 24 hours news coverage.

Last night we had quite a strong tremor around 19.00 which according the the JMA website was felt here in Tokyo as a 3 (on the Japanese scale of 7) with the epicentre in Ibaraki province to the north of Tokyo. For the first time in a week my heart did not leap into my mouth when the bookcase began rattling alarmingly: I take that as a welcome sign that the trauma is beginning to fade and that I will be able to cope with living in an earthquake zone for the next few years! It feels a little like we are living on top of a great sleeping beast that awoke and turned over last Friday, and is now settling back into a fitful slumber. Apparently these little adjustments in the tectonic plates will continue for a while. It is far more dramatic and unnerving when you are in the upper floors of a high-rise, Steve tells me, and you feel the whole building rolling, swaying and twisting, as it is designed to do.

One effect I have noticed since the earthquake is that I have become a little stupid: I have a hard time counting change and have to make people repeat phone numbers twice, can't remember where I left my purse, wallet, keys (that is, worse than my usual forgetfulness - on par with the first blurry months after the arrival of a baby!). My stomach is unsettled and I wake repeatedly at night, sweating, in the grip of  anxiety dreams. All signs that the fear has not yet been eliminated from my system.

However, I feel a change of mood walking around the neighborhood yesterday and today. Whereas early in the week faces were tense and worried, I now see more smiles, and people chatting away with animation. Restaurants are busy. More cars are on the street. If my Japanese neighbours return from Nagoya Monday (a public holiday) it will be a sign that things are returning to normal.

delicious chirashi with extra seafood

We had chirashi-zushi for lunch at our favorite local sushiya-san - arriving early as they had turned us away yesterday at 12:45 because they were too full (the two chefs can't really handle more than 10 people, even though the restaurant sits about 16). So in compensation we got an extra large portion of fish, "from Western Japan and Kyushu," the taisho was quick to specify. He also asked if we had been told by our government to leave (yes on the Swiss side, no on the Australian side, we replied) and thanked us for staying. "I didn't close the restaurant, I'm still working, it's the best I can do to help the country after the earthquake", he said.  This pretty much sums up the attitude of many Japanese.

Because my aunt Nicole requested I say a few words about her, I've included a photo of Gin, my "furry daughter" as the family calls her. I nursed her through several relapses of tick fever (bobesia and erlichia) for an interminable, tearful five months last year, and had resigned myself to her dying when she finally bounced back without the help of medication. We then had to leave her for 6 months at a kennel in Hong Kong in quarantine before she could fly to Tokyo. This little dog has been through a lot in her four years.  So it is an understatement to say that I love her very much.

Gin in a sweater

As I was concerned that it was cold in the kitchen at night with the heat switched off, and since she is probably the only little dog in Tokyo (or Hong Kong) who doesn't own a little Burberry-check coat, I wrapped her up for bed in an old sweater. By morning she had managed to wriggle out of the uncomfortable itchy thing!

The only reaction she has had to the earthquakes is to growl and bark more than usual at noises in and outside the house. It's the noises she notices, not the shaking itself.  I believe the notion that animals can detect earthquakes seconds before they happen has been disproved.

I conclude with a few more pictures of the neighborhood taken with my iphone, as the camera has gone to Perth with Laure.

One of the Buddhist temples in the neighborhood: it's mid-month (full moon day) so a few people were lighting incense and cleaning graves

The shinto shrine

Meguro-ku scouts collecting donations in front of Toritsudaigaku station