Prayers and Respect

I am really sad to see what has happened to Japan. I've always been wondering if the direction we are going is right, all that technology that helps to increase efficiency, fast food, fast cars,etc do they really help?

This is from my Brother , Lim who is in Japan. Its a little long but please take some time to read this.

It moves me to see how the Japanese reacts to this disaster. Lets continue our prayers.

Huang



"I'm Lim, a student currently in Japan. Local television shows nothing but disaster reports these days, watching how the Japanese people deal with the disaster makes my eyes swollen with tears. On that day, I was on the train to Ikebukuro when in a station halfway I started feeling everything shaking. The shake then subsided and the entire station was silent. It was followed by repeated public announcement regarding a huge earthquake and eventually a request to all passengers to evacuate the station. I then decided to walk back because the train does not seem to be going to recover operation anytime soon. (I was staying in a relatively remote area in the Saitama prefecture) The journey was a long 3 hours, but thanks to the people I met throughout the 3 hours that helped it wasn't 16.

As it must have been furiously reported overseas about the nuclear plants accidents, the plants are indeed shutdown and stopped functioning, by Day 3 it has been made clear by the power company that their power generating capacity has been greatly reduced and that being way under their projected overall demand by the areas not affected by the earthquake, they have had no choice but to execute a scheduled rotation blackout the following day, where affected areas are split into groups and each will take turn to have a 3-hour power outage.

The announcement was made in the late night of 13th, the night before my departure to Kyoto. My schedule was to take the electricity-powered train to Shinjuku where I would board the bus. Now with the scheduled shutdown, there would be no train and I would have to cancel my bus reservation and wait for an unknown period of time and have my whole schedule messed up.

I decided that there's nothing I can do but wait for the next morning to prepare for a last minute plan change. Although I don't think it would make any difference, I turned off all possible lights and electric appliance. The next morning I woke up to television continuing its news report. Hey wasn't it power outage? I then confirmed that the first round of scheduled power outage was not carried out, and there would be train to Shinjuku until 10am. Before I can properly sit down and collect my thoughts, I was already in Shinjuku where trains were running on 20% of usual frequency. I then read the latest news and realized what happened. Everyone in Japan, immediately upon understanding the situation, actively participated in power saving activities and reduced the power consumption to below the power generating capacity! Now that is Japan and its people. Even being far away from the earthquake area and safe in their own house with all family members, everyone turned off all possible heaters and lights, hoping that the earthquake victims get as much resources as they require.

A friend in Kobe, a place very very far away, says that from the balcony the city can usually be seen covered by varying lightings from each residential areas making up a very beautiful night scene but that night, it was unusually dark. Almost all lights were off, the scene was more beautiful, as the people's wish for the wellbeing of the victims shone brighter than ever.

As I turned on the news after arriving in disaster-free Kyoto, my heart felt so heavy and my nose turned red as I watch a child in an elementary school being interviewed. It is still winter for most parts of Japan in March, but the school the child is in had all heaters turned off, and to preserve heat, all windows are tightly closed and everyone worn thick tracksuits and gathered their usually seperated tables and sat into one big group in the centre of the classroom. "Its
a bit cold now with the heaters off but we are ok. We are able to study in class and not taking refuge from the earthquake so we are considered lucky, we cannot do much but if we can help even just a little, I don't mind saving power by turning off the heaters and being a little colder than usual," says the child with a timid smile. How pure can one's love be... This is how Japanese children are educated and this is how Japanese society deals with hard times. "Together".