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Rainbow of Peace by Jason Hill used under creative commons licence
Some of the latest stories and information from Japan and one more way you can help. You can buy a print from flickr. You bid on it and when you win you make the donation to charity and the photographer sends you the print.
Here is another great way to help the victims of the earthquake. You can get Songs for Japan for $9.99. All the money goes to the Japanese Red Cross. 38 tracks by Bon Jovi, Dylan, Eminem, Pink, Sade, Springsteen, Sting… Yoko Ono donated Imagine by John Lennon. I have always liked Yoko Ono since a friend of mine told me about writing to her when he was a boy. It was just to say he was so sorry about John's death. Yoko Ono wrote back personally. So check out her site for the details or just go to itunes. And here are more background links.
In one of my earthquake posts I wrote recent articles in the title and at the side of the screen it was shortened to recent art. So for anyone who was hoping to see earthquake art and who was disappointed this is a great picture of Japanese superheroes helping out in the earthquake. If you recognize any of them please put their names in the comments! Check out the other cool pictures at that link too. We humans need all the help we can get.
We are all only human and maybe there is only so much earthquake news our brains can take in. But Japan is still in emergency mode and I don't feel comfortable yet doing a normal blog article about budo. So for a little longer here is some of the news from Japan. Sendai is the town of Masamune Date. He had an eyepatch and a cool helmet with a big crescent moon. So if you need a change from the sadness and tragedy of the news maybe you or someone you know might want to make a model of him (you need both pages I think). But don't forget the prayers.
There's no real news today. But there have been warnings that children and pregnant women should not drink tap water. Anyway some more interesting articles. Please keep praying and please keep doing whatever you can.
cool story about a real hero - don't read it if you are offended by profanity - or read it anyway if you think John McClane was tough in Die Hard http://badassoftheweek.com/akaiwa.html
il pleure dans mon coeur
comme il pleut sur la ville
it's raining in my heart
like the rain falling on the city
Paul Verlaine
It was raining today.
Black Rain has a meaning in Japanese - the fallout from a nuclear bomb. 黒い雨 Kuroi Ame was a 1965 novel by Masuji Ibuse about the aftermath of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. It was made into a movie with the same title directed by Shohei Imamura. The film was very well-received critically. The wikipedia entry about it says,
The film has a strong theme of the Buddhist beliefs on the suffering in life, that things are transient and the uncertainty of the time of one's death.
Then Hollywood used the same title for an action thriller directed by Ridley Scott. Black Rain is a cool title but in Japanese it's inextricably associated with the novel and with Hiroshima. The Japanese movie Kuroi Ame came out in May 1989 and the Hollywood movie Black Rain came out in September 1989. The American movie starred Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Yusaku Matsuda and Ken Takakura. It's not a great film but it is enjoyable and it's also memorable as the last performance of the cool and charismatic Japanese actor Yusaku Masuda. He had cancer and he died on 6 November 1989 soon after the movie's premiere aged thirty-nine.
This is another post about the serious situation in Japan. It is not about budo. Some random fragments from twitter and other places.
Great advice any time
"Please prepare for aftershock, control your activity and be careful not to put yourself into confusion." From the Kodokan (world judo headquarters) home page
Rip-off
British Airways. Return fare to the UK quoted to a guy before the quake: 55,000 yen (say $700) per person.
Return fare to the UK quoted to him after the quake (same flight, same day): 600,000 yen (say $7,500) per person.
Tears
Read on BBC. A nine-year-old boy who lost his family in the tsunami is searching for them. Of course he didn't have any photos. So he drew pictures.
Surprise
An Italian rescue group arrived in Japan to find that the level of radiation in Tokyo was lower than in Rome.
Double punch
When all this is over who is going to want to buy rice or fruit or vegetables from Fukushima?
Crisis (mis)management parallel
"A potentially catastrophic technological problem, an incomplete crisis response plan, misleading early information, divided private and public authority, ineffective initial actions." This is about the BP oilspill not Fukushima
Not confidence-inspiring
TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and METI (the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) have a history of covering up nuclear incidents.
When experts warn you, listen
"Japan was warned more than two years ago by the international nucle
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This is a follow-up post about the serious situation in Japan. It is not about budo.
Since the earthquake on Friday 11 March and the devastation of the tsunami in the north of Japan things around Tokyo have been very still. There are still shortages of basic foods. Trains are still running very reduced services. There are still frequent aftershocks. The Japanese government is still very economical with information. The US Embassy and the British Embassy still tell people not to worry.
Now the French government has informed French people in Japan that they should leave Japan or go to the south of the country far from the affected areas. Extra flights are scheduled for evacuation of French nationals.
So that's the situation. No rice. No bread. Geiger counters. And the French government telling its citizens to get out of Dodge.
A British rescue team from International Rescue Corps came to Japan on Monday. They had helped in 32 countries before this and only ever had problems with the governments in China and Afghanistan. Here they couldn't get the right paperwork from the British Embassy. So they went back home on Wednesday. Disappointed probably wouldn't describe their feelings adequately.
We pray that everyone in Fukushima prefecture and Miyagi prefecture who doesn't have a home now has managed to find some shelter and warmth and food and water. Relief trucks don't have enough fuel. And tonight it is snowing with temperatures below zero Celsius/in the twen
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03-29-2011 04:27 AM 
This is another post about the serious situation in Japan. It is not about budo. Some random fragments from twitter and other places.
This is a follow-up post about the serious situation in Japan. It is not about budo. 