Tsukuba in the news, life WILL be okay

Today the Daily Yomiuri Newspaper has an article about Tsukuba. It explains how many research centers were damaged or had trouble because of the electricity cuts.

You can read the article here: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110401005103.htm

Many, many people have told me their stories about their offices and laboratories. I was also at a research center when the earthquake struck, so I understand.

It IS tough, and there are no easy answers. Equipment is broken, months or years of work was lost, buildings are dangerous. But please, please don't give up!

I didn't talk about it to anyone, not even to my husband, but I had so much stress after the earthquake. The aftershocks continued many times a day. We are very, very lucky that personally nothing was broken, but when I looked at the destruction here and there, I thought "How can Japan recover?" Then the stupid foreign media got into a panicked frenzy and I was so angry. I just wanted to cry but many other people needed my help, and thousands more people have lost everything. I had no time to cry and in fact, no good reason. Then I thought, "One tiny thing at a time."

That is what we can do. Pick up one book and put it back on the shelf, then another book, then another. Help one friend, then go together and help another friend. Go and buy vegetables from your local farm-shop, that helps the shop, the farmers and their families. Go to the bigger shops you usually go to - as I wrote a few weeks ago, Starbucks doesn't need my money for 2 cups of coffee, but those young women who made my coffee that day DO need a job. When they get a salary, they will go shopping somewhere else.

I'm trying hard to be optimistic and think, "If it is broken or lost, how can I fix it or start again in a better way? Is this a chance for me to find new ideas?"

Coincidentally, I saw something on the Internet this morning about Briton in the war years. Their motto was "Make do and mend." This is exactly the Japanese "mottainai" - waste not, want not.

I don't mean to be flippant, or to hurt anyone's feelings, but all our ancestors (in all countries in the world) faced really hard lives. Modern people have really good lives and we CAN start again. Even from the very beginning.

Just one tiny thing at a time ....

Rice cooker cake

Lemon Cake

Do you want to make a cake but you don't have an oven? Here is a recipe for a super-easy cake that you can make in the rice cooker!

Ingredients:
1 small packet of hotcake mix
1 egg, at room temperature is best
100ml of milk, at room temperature is best
1 teaspoon of sugar
1cm of butter
Plus - flavor of the kind of cake you want.

Lemon and Honey Cake
Slices of lemon on the bottom
of the bowl before the mixture.

Method
1. Heat a 1cm slice of butter in the microwave oven until it is completely melted.
2. Beat the egg and milk together. Add the sugar. Add the hotcake mix. Finally add the melted butter and beat well.
3. Rub some butter around the inside of the rice cooker bowl, up to about 4cm deep.
4. Add the mixture into the bowl.
5. Press "On" on the rice cooker. Just the regular course is ok

Flavors

Ginger Honey Cake

   - Ginger Cake (my favorite).
   Mix 2 teaspoons of ginger  
   powder with the dry
   hotcake mix. Exchange
   2 teaspoons of honey for
   the sugar.

   - Lemon Cake
   Add the finely grated rind of
   1 organic lemon. For Orange Cake, use the rind of 1 orange. Yuzu is okay too! Add to the dry hotcake mix. You can put slices of lemon in the bottom of the rice cooker bowl before you add in the mixture.

- Chocolate Cake
Add about 1 to 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder to the dry hotcake mix.

- Banana Chocolate Chip Cake
Mash 1 or 1 1/2 soft bananas and mix them with the egg and milk mix. Put the finished mixture in the rice cooker bowl, and put some big chocolate chips ON TOP of the mixture. They will sink. DO NOT put them on the bottom because they will touch the metal of the bowl and burn.

- Herb "Cake"
Don't put any sugar, but add a pinch of salt. Add dry herbs or fresh herbs as you like.

Other ideas: vanilla, blueberries, dried fruit of any kind, canned peaches that you drained carefully, peanut butter instead of butter, grated apple and cinnamon, apple slices in the bottom of the bowl + cinnamon, etc.

Points:
- Please use the butter because it makes the cake rich and moist.
- For the flavor, dry things should be mixed with the dry hotcake mix first.
- Don't use things that are too wet, or reduce the milk to 80ml.
- If you want a lighter cake, add 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- You can make 2 cakes and after they are cool, you can join them together with cream to make a shortcake :)

Banana with big chocolate chips.
This is a heavy-type cake.

For more recipes, please go to the cooking blog with this link: http://eating-easy.blogspot.com/

A silver ball

For some very strange reason, Dusty loves aluminium foil. If I unroll some foil to use for cooking, he immediately comes running, no matter where he is or what he was doing. He also comes if we open a bar of chocolate wrapped in foil :)

I don't want him to have a sheet of foil but sometimes as a treat I carefully fold in the edges and create a ball. He'll play with it for hours until he loses it under something, or until Kuro steals it. Sometimes he runs around with it in his mouth, growling at Kuro.

 Above I wrote 'aluminium' which is British English. Americans use 'aluminum' which is simpler.

Gasoline, at last!

Since last Thursday, many gasoline stands are open and don't have any long lines. I could get gas this morning at about 8:15am and I was the only person at the pumps. After the disaster, people were waiting up to 3 hours to get even 20 liters. (Most stands had restrictions and 20L was the maximum.)

Of course, gas has become more expensive, now 148yen per liter. A few weeks ago it was in the 130 to 135yen range. I heard that in Tokyo, it is about 160yen. I was a bit surprised when I checked the internet and found out that the average price of gas in Sydney (Australia) is $1.48. That's about 123yen, so not so much different to around January this year in Japan.

By the way, in British English gasoline is called petroleum, or petrol for short. That is why BP is b + p = British Petroleum :)  In Australia, if you ask for gas for your car, people will think you mean LPG!

The kinds of petrol in Australia are:
regular unleaded petrol = regular = regular in Japan
premium unleaded petrol = premium = hi-oc in Japan (from high octane)
diesel = diesel in Japan :)

There are other types of ethanol or other biofuels, too. You can find a link here.

Luckily, I had filled my tank just 3 days before the earthquake hit so I didn't need to worry about gas. But it was a good lesson to me that I should always keep a full tank, not let the gas run down to the last marker on the digital fuel indicator.

Oh, and if you go to Australia and if you find a true service station (not self-serve) you can say to the attendant "Fill 'er up".  (er = her = the car!)  But if you want to use proper English instead of slang, just say "A full tank of regular, please."


Finally, you might be surprised as some petrol stations in Australia. Many are like convenience stores - they sell EVERYTHING and are open 24 hours a day.

Group nouns

Very often I hear something like:

"I couldn't find what I was looking for so a staff helped me."

'a staff' is incorrect because "staff" is a group noun. It means ALL the people who work somewhere.

"Staff at the Imperial Hotel are very professional."

If you want to count them one by one, please use a counting word. Almost always we use 'member'.

"I couldn't find what I was looking for so a staff member helped me."

Or you can use other nouns that are the names of the things in a group:

staff = president, vice president, department manager, section manager, secretary, office workers, cleaners -- 10 staff members

furniture = shelf/shelves, desks, chairs -- 10 pieces of furniture

money = notes, coins

work = jobs, projects, tasks

homework = projects, essays, reports


It is okay to use plural for the things in the group, so "S" is okay. But please don't use plural for the group nouns: furnitures

Earthquake map

Dots representing the quakes

Tonight I received this link to an earthquake map. It shows all the earthquakes from 12:00am of March 11, up to when you open the link. Up to 10pm tonight (March 27) there have been 798 quakes. Each one is represented by a circle showing the magnitude and different colors for depth.

I will warn you before you open the link, it is horrible to watch the animation of the first quakes and the aftershocks. It made me feel sick again. Watching it is like watching fireworks and the only good thing is the number of aftershocks is decreasing - the ones we feel in Ibaraki are becoming less.

LINK -->
http://www.japanquakemap.com/

If you want to watch individual quakes, put your mouse over the list on the right-hand side of the page.

Map showing Tsukuba
Mito is the capital city of this prefecture

Area map

Hay fever

A few days ago I wrote about the yellow pollen that is everywhere. And of course, pollen means ....

HAY FEVER!

Itchy and red eyes
Itchy nose
Stuffy nose
Runny nose
Headache
Feeling lethargic

Luckily I have no true 'fever' which means we have a high body temperature. In "hay fever" the word is kind of like 病 in Japanese.

I wish Golden Week would hurry up and arrive because that is just about when hay fever is gone :)

Bi-carbonate of soda

Bi-carbonate of soda (baking soda) is wonderful for cleaning in the house. I used to buy it in big packets from a home-center, but now it is sold in the 100yen shop.

First I put it in a shaker bottle, which I can use to fill up the small white dish you can see. I keep that next to the dish washing detergent in the kitchen. Put a VERY little detergent on the sponge, then dip it into the baking soda. It is perfect for gently cleaning teacups :)  All the tea stains will be removed easily. It is also good for scrubbing pots and pans, and to clean the stainless steel sink. Glasses become so shiny when you use it.

Another good thing is that it helps to make bubbles (I don't know why) so you don't need so much detergent.

As for the big plastic container, this is what I keep in the laundry and I add one or two scoops to the middle rinse cycle when I wash clothes. It makes towels soft.

If you want to try a science experiment and to clean your drains at the same time, put one cup of baking soda into the drain, followed by one cup of vinegar. Be careful because it will FIZZ  -  like a volcano! But the fizzing bubbles are good for cleaning the drain and cutting any grease from the walls of the pipes.

It also absorbs smells, so you can leave an open packet in cupboards or in the linen closet.

Finally, keep a package by the cook-top because it will help put out an oil fire if your fish grill or tenpura pan catch fire :)

The yellow dust is NOT radiation

Many people are terrified about radiation. I heard that many people in Tokyo called the government about yellow dust they found everywhere. It is NOT radiation, so don't panic.
Can you guess what the yellow dust is?

Pollen! Yuck. Probably from the cedar trees around my house. It is no wonder I have hay fever and feel bad.

Some people around the world still really don't believe it is pollen. Obviously they don't live anywhere near trees! They should read this blog entry from the BBC; the writer is talking about England in 2010. NOT radiation :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesnature/2010/05/tree_pollen_and_hay_fever.html

Thank you

This small gift from E made my day so much brighter on Tuesday.

I've been feeling blue because the aftershocks are continuing really strongly and frequently. But these sweet peas look so happy and bright, and smell lovely so I can't help but smile.

Classes as normal

From Tuesday (Monday was a public holiday), we have had classes as usual. Some members couldn't come because of gasoline shortages, taking care of family, etc, but it is nice to see familiar faces and talk.

The classroom has changed a little - MORE disaster prevention than before. This time I learned that even small things can make a big mess if they fly around.

When I moved to this office I secured the large bookshelf with a bracket on the top, rubber wedges at the bottom on the front, and L-brackets on the back. It didn't move, even in this powerful quake :) But just to be sure, I added new L-brackets on the bottom on the front. I have heard many stories of shelves, cabinets, cupboards and even refrigerators "walking" out from the wall with each shake. Scary!!!

One big problem is that because of the long earthquake and many powerful aftershocks very quickly after that, most of the books fell out of the bookshelf :(  This happened at most people's houses. So on the first Monday, I bought screw-in hooks and net at Yamashin Home Center and totally covered the bookshelves. I don't want to clean up ever again!

Another problem was that all my plastic files slid out onto the floor. The solution for this is easy - I wrapped a strap with a clip around the whole bookshelf to hold them in. It's really easy to open so no trouble.



And I bought 7 construction work helmets ...... if you don't have these, bicycle or motorbike helmets are good, too.


And I put another strap around the water cooler to attach it to the pillar, plus made legs with L-brackets and really strong double sided tape. This cooler is rented so I hope the company won't be angry when they see it :)

For the fax machine, printer, etc, I used gel sheets that are specifically for electrical items to prevent them moving in an earthquake. The package said the highest level quakes are okay - I think that must be true because now I cannot pick up my fax; it is stuck to the desk and will not move. Then I added wide cello-tape for extra protection.


Please take some time to look around your house and see what you can do to stop things from falling or flying out from inside cupboards and shelves. I've heard many horrible stories about kitchen cupboards where all the crockery and glassware pushed open the swinging doors and fell out and broke. Broken china and glass is really dangerous, especially for pets.

A few months ago we were talking about New Year resolutions. Well, I've resolved to reduce the amount of things I have. Anything that I don't need for my daily life shouldn't be in my house or classroom. I love my Kindle (electronic book) even more than before!

Supporting local businesses

Yesterday I went shopping near my house.

Mr Hozomi's vegetable shop is open as usual (every Monday a holiday) from 10am to 6pm. Lots of fresh vegetables and free-range eggs.

Tsukuba Bagel is open. Handmade bagels every day. (Thursdays are holidays.)

If you need flowers, please go to Aqua Bloom in Umezono. Mari has lovely preserved flowers right now, and mid-week she'll have fresh flowers again.

It is really important we go shopping as usual and support our local businesses - they can't survive without customers.

This week's classes as normal

The classroom will be open as normal from tomorrow :)

If you are in Tsukuba and you would like to come, please come as usual. Of course, I understand some people are away or busy.

See you soon,
a.k.

We are STILL okay :)

Just in case you are watching the news and are worried about the big aftershock in Ibaraki, yes, it was Japanese level 5 -, or M6.1 here. But we are STILL okay!

Nothing fell down. But I hope adrenalin is good for us because this time I had a massive surge of adrenalin. In English this is called the "fight or flight" response. It means we fight or escape. I can't find the Japanese words for this, but here is a link about it in Japanese. 

By the way, please don't panic about the spinach news either. Some spinach from NORTH Ibaraki, just near Fukushima tested positive for LOW levels of radiation. The vegetables in Tsukuba are okay.

To be really honest, I'm more worried about agricultural chemicals that are sprayed on most vegetables all around the world :)

Please, let's try to be calm and use commonsense. The people in the disaster areas are doing their best to live every day. In other areas we shouldn't run around like chickens with our heads cut off. 狂ったように

One week

It is hard to believe that one week has already passed, isn't it?

I hope everyone is doing well, where-ever you are tonight. We are still here in Tsukuba and don't have any plan to go anywhere.

We went to Kasumi supermarket at Lala Garden this morning to get some necessary groceries, and it seemed to be almost normal. There were enough fresh foods and even the bakery inside Kasumi was open. I've heard most of the other shops in the mall are due to open on Monday the 21st.

The gasoline stand across from Lala Garden had a looooong line when I went to the classroom this morning, but about 1 hour later it was closed. I'm sorry, I haven't heard of anywhere to buy gasoline easily.

The cats have been REALLY naughty today. They understand what aftershocks are and look up quickly when the first rumble can be felt in the ground, but they don't seem to be able to predict an earthquake is coming.
The fish freeze quite often - I guess they can feel vibrations even before we can hear sound - and I guess it means they felt quite traumatized at the time.

For readers not in Japan, it is difficult to explain but you can hear the bigger aftershocks before you feel them. It is like the ground is growling :( Luckily there have been fewer shocks today and tonight. Most last night were over magnitude 5, so basically earthquakes in their own right, but short which is a good thing.

Anyway, Tsukuba and Japan are my home and I don't want to go anywhere else.

Open shops

Yesterday in my area these shops were open:

Marumo, in Ninomiya Village, next to Aoki on Nishi Odori
They had milk and other dairy products in limited amounts. At that time, no meat but many vegetables.

Couronne Bakery
Seemed to be operating as normal

Hozomi Vegetable Shop
It has been open since Saturday as usual. Many nice vegetables and eggs.

Hanamasa Supermarket
Lots of meat, and fish.

The 3 gasoline stands from Nishi-odori to Route 408, on Doho Park Street were closed.

The convenience stores on the same street are open.

----
The internet says that Lala Garden Kasumi is open, but the other shops are closed. Maybe that means all Kasumi are open?

Yamashin Home Center was open on Sunday and Monday up to 2pm.

If you know any shops open in your area, please tell me and I will add them.

Thursday, still okay :)

Good morning,

We are still okay and are staying in Tsukuba :)

If you are bored, you can send me an email ...

ak

Wednesday - we are all okay.

Everything is okay today. There are aftershocks but please don't believe the foreign media reports about radiation. It is sensationalism.

I was so angry about it today that I called Australia. I called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Media Dept.), the Australian Broadcasting Commission -  ABC, and the Sydney Morning Herald, to ask them to report responsibly :(

It is horrible that the foreign news just wants to have exciting stories and that they twist information to make it sound worse.

Anyway, now I am in a bad mood because if we cannot trust national news like the ABC, who can we trust?

Take care everyone.
ak.

About Tuesday night

Hi.
I just want to let everyone know that everything is fine, but we just have to be careful about what TEPCO (electricity company) is doing.

Last night I cancelled lessons but the power didn't go out :(  This evening there is another scheduled cut.

The power is supposed to come back on about 7pm, but I guess at that time everyone will be at home. I don't want to ask you to come out again, to come to the lesson for the later classes. I know everyone is worried about gasoline.

I really hope next week will be okay. Right now, if there is electricity, I'm happy to have lessons. (Already finished the first one this morning!)

Take care,
ak

Tuesday after 3:30pm is cancelled

I'm sorry, TEPCO has released the new power cut schedule. It will start about 3:30pm.

Let's cancel tonight's lessons.

Thank you.
AK.