Koizumi region around Tsuya river. The trainline has collapsed in the foreground. The car bridge in the background is also destroyed.

It is a bit surreal to watch the videos of the recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.  There are images of places where I used to hang out flooding with waves 10m high, and photos of roads I’ve driven on a thousand times split in half and with ships beached on them.  It’s been difficult to see homes washing away and cars floating down the streets.  Most heart-wrenching of all has been the inability to make contact with those affected, my friends, former students and coworkers.  People whom I considered family for the three years I lived in Motoyoshi.  A great deal of them have likely lost their homes.  Koizumi, the southern most village in Motoyoshi, is a very small community right along the water.  I surfed there many times.  The train line is destroyed in Koizumi, the bridge carrying it over Tsuya river having been knocked down.  Many homes were in these low-lying areas near the river and coastline.

Kaigan-shokudou is a restaurant owned by the family of Kazuma, a kindergartner I taught in Koizumi.  It was no more than a hundred yards from the coast.  We (the school staff) would often order bento boxes for lunch from Kaigan-shokudou on the days that there was no kyushoku (school lunch).  I knew when Kazuma had told his family about me and the games we played at the kindergarten (my work at kindergartens consisted of about 10% English teaching, and the rest was playing games while tossing out relevant English vocabulary) because after that I always got extra food in the lunches I ordered.  I can only hope that he and his family are safe.  That’s been the hardest part to handle through all this, the not knowing.  Continue reading →