Well, I thought I'd take one out of my 26 posts this month to just write a bit about Japan. Hell, it does start with the letter J after all. Things here are incredibly crazy still. Some reports are saying that casualties from the quake have caused the deaths of over 15,000 people and an estimated 28,000 may have died in the Tsunami. I believe the last I heard, several hundred thousand of people have been directly affected by the quake i.e. have had to be relocated or are now homeless. The relief efforts are continuing though; several hundred million dollars have been raised for Japan relief - my wife mentioned to me that the CEO of Softbank (my phone company) has donated over 100 million dollars to the relief efforts and is donating his entire monthly paycheck every month in addition. There are lots of reports, from people, all over the world, talking about how much people have come out to help. The guys responsible for TF2 have donated almost half a million dollars, and the RPG community has come out in massive support. This week on Kev n' Jen's "Plus One" podcast, they talked about how tragedies like this have the power to showcase the good in people. That's definitely true. The disaster has shown how great people can be. But, nothing is over. There are still quakes happening every day; yesterday a massive quake around 7.1 or so, hit Fukushima, causing temporary loss of ability to poor water on the reactors because the power went out (though I believe that got fixed) and another quake this morning in Chiba had people rattled as well. We got hit by another one today, while I was sitting eating lunch (actually just a cookie) and that had some of the teachers quite spooked as well. Some people are saying that it might be years until the plates calm down and these quakes stop. Going to be a rough time for the Japanese people.
I don't want to go on too long, mostly because I'm still pretty sick and trying to get some rest, but I wanted to take a little bit of time out to applaud the efforts of all the people who are giving what they can to support the relief effort here. You are making a huge difference. The people here need as much as they can get; my wife was telling me something she heard on the news: despite the fact that hundreds of millions has been donated, after that has been divided up between all the people who have lost their homes and loved ones in the quake, the tsunami, and the aftermath, every person will only get about $3000 dollars of it. That is to make up for the jobs, homes, and family that they lost. They are going to have to make do on what amounts to only a single month's paycheck in whatever effort they try to make at rebuilding. They really, really need all the help that they can get.
Thanks people! Keep up the good work. Japan sends its thanks!!
