Archive | March, 2013

In a few minutes

11 Mar

In just a few minutes it will be the moment that the earthquake struck two years ago, triggering the tsunami and nuclear meltdown that devastated north eastern Japan. Over 300,000 people still live in temporary accommodation. The nation is divided on the merits of turning the nuclear power plants back on and, of course, the memories of lost ones is raw for so many, and always will be.

Thinking of the survivors once a year is, of course, not enough. But it is at least a start, as was Quakebook; a start at trying to describe what happened. After description hopefully comes understanding, and from that spring sympathy and empathy, but even those admirable feelings are not enough. From good intentions must come action, and from action we can do good.

Let’s do good.

To mark the second anniversary…

9 Mar

In a few days, it will be the second anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. You can still download the ebook for free, or buy a bilingual hardback from any good bookstore or website. For something different, Goken, which published 2,000 paperback copies of the bilingual book, is offering up to 20 books that were returned from bookstores to collectors who are encouraged to make a donation to charity in exchange for the book. These are the last 20 of the softback available anywhere in the world. To receive a free copy, 1) follow info_goken on Twitter and retweet the following tweet about the free offer: http://bit.ly/12w19DB . You have until midnight March 11th, Tokyo time. For everyone else, may we suggest remembering that there are still 320,000 people in temporary accommodation and the people of Fukushima need more than kind thoughts and good intentions once every year or two, though that’s a start, of course.