After watching NHK and BBC all weekend and talking about it with himself, we decided to postpone our trip to Japan until the autumn. It took me about 48 hours to actually stop feeling awful about it - probably a mixture of not enough sleep, stress, too much watching disaster footage and guilt over letting people down after telling them that I was delaying for a day, a week - and then not coming. The Japan-11 tag I was using to identify emails with hotel bookings and meetings is now mostly on ITI Japanese Network emails about volunteer translation and interpreting and disaster relief efforts.
My case is still packed in the front room, and I've had to get bits and pieces out of it during the week but not had the heart to unpack properly yet. After the hard decision was made, I then had to write to everyone to tell them, cancel meetings with clients in Tokyo, cancel flights, cancel JR Rail Passes, cancel hotel reservations, cancel the mobile phone and wi-fi rental... it will take weeks before it's all sorted out. I just feel exhausted. But apart from staying away and not taking up resources, and donating to the relief effort (the Japanese Red Cross seem to be heavy on the ground out there, so they're getting my donations) there's not a lot I can do.
I leave you with a photo from the local DIY and gardening shop, where we went to try to find a bird box. The only ones they had were painted with hideous Disney Winnie the Pooh motifs, which put us off completely (not sure if the birds care). But they have scythe blades! And sickles! And machetes! Not sure what they think people are growing here.
