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Monday 25 April 2011

In the shadow of fear

Walking the dog today I noticed everyone is looking down at their feet. It's like we are all living in fear of the ground opening up and swallowing us in to it. It has happened after all. We have seen pictures and heard stories or seen it with our own eyes. Fear is just behind our shoulder waiting to tap.

It's this kind of prolonged continued tension that gets to you. It brings you down, it demotivates you, it eats you up if you will let it. On the one hand I so want to get back to work, which is postponed till May, and on the other hand I don't know if I can teach anymore without having a panic attack in the middle of class. I don't suppose I will but if the building starts to shake I think a lot of students and myself will be far more scared than we would have been this time last year before having experienced such a monumental shaking.

It really seems on some days like we are just surviving from one aftershock to the next and after each ..breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn't a bigger one. As of today 1084 aftershocks since March 11 and most of them have been bigger than any quakes we ever felt before the 9.

Quake map :
http://www.japanquakemap.com/

Here's a few pics from today's dogwalk..we use to walk in through this park every day but it has completely collapsed and is off limits to the public, still unsafe. The poor central house you can see has completely fallen forward as if it was crushed by an enormous vice on either end..which, in a way, it was.