Remembering 3.11.2011

Today marks the third anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that took countless lives and completely altered many more.  I was a high school senior in Tokyo and had just been released from my Friday afternoon homeroom class.  Everyone was dressed in costume for our annual themed Bingo Night later that day.  Bingo, of course, was cancelled.  The tremors were by far the worst I have ever felt, despite having lived in Tokyo, where earthquakes are a daily occurrence, for 17 years.  I felt like such a baby when I later learned how much worse things had been in northern Japan.

The media has not covered this tragedy recently as often as it had before, but the victims are still suffering and need help.  Northern Japan is mainly farmland, but many people avoid food from that region because of the possibility of ingesting something radioactive. This makes it very difficult for the locals to get back on their feet.  There are several more heart-breaking stories, like children living nearby the Fukushima power plant being diagnosed with brain cancer, and a horrifyingly large number of lives lost as a result of post-earthquake trauma.

Today I am keeping the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in my thoughts, and I hope to help them one day, somehow.