Author: Justin

Jammin’ solo

Max was so jazzed about playing his toy guitar, we broke down and ordered a real one off the internet. It’s called a Plum Blossom, if I remember correctly. I arranged for one of my second year students to come give him lessons once a week, but it’s just too soon. He won’t play when we want him to, and often just ignores people he doesn’t know.

Ah well, at least I got some photos, and the guitar is being kept safe for if he shows an interest again.

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I’m posting a bunch of phonecam photos in the coming days, so please forgive the craptastic quality.

No Holiday in Cambodia

We had been planning to go to Cambodia with Nam’s faculty for a couple days from the day after tomorrow. Max’s chickenpox had cleared up almost completely this week and he was going to go with mommy and daddy. Mina was to stay at home with relatives and the nanny, and we had done a test run with these arrangements. We assumed she would come down with chickenpox weeks ago, but it never happened (truth be told, we wanted it out of the way quickly and knew she was strong enough to get through it – Max and Mina played together all day every day,I even had them drinking from the same cup). Everything was going fine.

Then it all came unraveled.

Our nanny suddenly stopped coming last Sunday because of a serious personal issue. Even that was OK, because Nam’s little brother’s girlfriend, who works with kids, was going to watch Mina at our in-laws house.

Then two nights ago, Mina came down with a fever. Yesterday red bumps started appearing here and there. Today they have turned to pustules and she is itchy cranky baby.

Shit.

No holiday in Cambodia (which we already paid for).

What did we need a holiday from? Chickenpox. What prevented us from going? Chickenpox.

DAMN YOU CHICKENPOX!!

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– Here’s to another couple weeks before we can bear to look at Mina’s face again without feeling terrible.

Looking for Yoichi Enomoto, Sachiko Enomoto

We are looking for my grandmother’s cousins, Yoichi Enomoto and Sachiko Enomoto. They live here, about seven kilometers from the coast of Sendai, one of the hardest hit areas. Their eldest son, Yoshi, lives in Tokyo. We do not know where any of them are.

This is a photo of Yoichi and Sachiko, they are both in their nineties:

The only webcam feed in their area still up as of yesterday is down today: Izumi-ku Sendai webcam
That’s about a mile from their neighborhood.

Their Romanized address is:
Miyagi-ken Sendai-shi Taihaku-ku Yagiyama Yayoi-cho
Postal code: 982-0833

Japan Updates

NHK in Japanese has the best live coverage (the other JP news channels have been unstable today):
High speed 1
High speed 2
Low speed link

In English, NHK International is useless and US news channels are a FUCKING JOKE, especially CNN (presenters reading Twitter updates apparently based on what people are seeing on other channels). Try the streaming Al Jazeera page.

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I’ve gotten in touch with some relatives, but the Yoshida clan is spread far and wide, and there are 6.0 (on the Japanese scale the max is 7) aftershocks happening as I type this.

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UPDATE: Google Crisis Response page

Hak Na Sarakham

Maha Sarakham University, where my wife works, paid off the right people to make a sappy love story movie (the kind that makes the most money here) about the university and our town in general called “Hak Na Sarakham” (Laotian for “Love Sarakham”). It opens today at SermThai Plaza in downtown Sarakham, and we saw a steady stream of motorcycles heading that way from the university.

It was fun trying to guess all of the locations shown in the trailer; our favorite bar, Play Bar, is shown towards the end.