{"id":246,"date":"2011-03-13T19:47:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T01:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/?p=246"},"modified":"2011-03-17T17:17:31","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T23:17:31","slug":"im-here-in-nagoya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/2011\/03\/13\/im-here-in-nagoya\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m here in Nagoya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, after I got home, I rode my bike a lot and played DDR in Kawasaki, but I wasn&#8217;t feeling in the dancing mood.  I wanted to go to the gym, but then I heard about the nuclear power plant going critical, so I went back home.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday morning, I was reading twitter and saw my friend and MMA photographer Dan Herbertson (http:\/\/danielherbertson.com\/) wrote that he was going to Nagoya and had friends there.  He offered to take me along.  I started reading about how anonymous government sources stated unofficially that traces of radiation were being detected in Tokyo, and it was recommended to take iodine pills. I went to the drug store but found out that they don&#8217;t sell them here in stores&#8230;it&#8217;s like a prescription drug.  So I stocked up on nori (seaweed) and while munching on that, went back and kept monitoring the situation from online.<\/p>\n<p>Dan was really going to Nagoya, so I decided to go with him.  I packed my bags and met him Shinagawa. It took about an hour and a half, and we got here at about 6:30 PM. <\/p>\n<p>Walking around at night, I saw many pretty buildings and structures!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/?action=view&amp;current=nagoyaprettything.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/nagoyaprettything.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never been here before.  The Nagoya station is the largest station in Japan, and Nagoya is the fifth largest city in Japan!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/s66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/?action=view&amp;current=prettythings2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/prettythings2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p> I&#8217;m so grateful that they let me sleep on their futon on the floor.  We went to an Izakaya Japanese restaurant for dinner, and then back to their place.  <\/p>\n<p>This is me and Dan in the restaurant eating chicken wings.  We don&#8217;t what we&#8217;re doing.  We&#8217;re just &#8216;winging it&#8217; from here. *drum roll*<\/p>\n<p>Three other people from Tokyo are staying, so ten people crammed into this small apartment.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/?action=view&amp;current=folksImstayingwith.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/folksImstayingwith.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is Dan and I in the restaurant&#8230;we&#8217;re just &#8216;winging it&#8217; by eating chicken wings. \ud83d\ude00<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/?action=view&amp;current=meanddanwingingit.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h263\/Roxyatsugi\/meanddanwingingit.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><br \/>\nI really want to go back home&#8230;.I keep hearing how the nuclear situation seems to be stabilized&#8230; I wanna train and I wanna work and I wanna be in my own apartment, but there&#8217;s also supposed to be a 7 magnitude earthquake in Tokyo!! within the next three days.  Apparently there&#8217;s a 70% chance.  And if another reactor blows and the winds blow radiation towards us, it&#8217;ll be bad.<\/p>\n<p>I was considering going back anyway, but I just learned that in addition to the rolling black outs, the train lines are stopped&#8230;maybe half throughout Tokyo.  I saw pictures of Kichijouji and Shinjuku station, where people are lined up in vain trying to get to work.<\/p>\n<p>I JUST got a phone call from my manager saying that lessons are cancelled today and tomorrow, and regarding Wednesday, we&#8217;ll wait and see.  I&#8217;M SO RELIEVED. I don&#8217;t want to lose my job because of this.  Dan said, &#8220;There&#8217;s NO WAY they would fire you!  This is said to be the worst disaster since WWII&#8221; but hey, management fired a union member for asking to extend her leave of abcense because she needed breast cancer treatment, so I wouldn&#8217;t put it past them.  But I&#8217;m glad they&#8217;re doing the right thing.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s really amazing how the Japanese swallow everything the media says.  Us Americans are raised with a natural distrust of the media and government, so when I start noticing contradictions between scientists and politicians, I call &#8220;bullsh*t&#8221; and make my own decision.  I talked to a co-worker&#8217;s Japanese roommate and explained about the &#8220;source&#8221; who mentioned the traces of Tokyo radiation.    He said to me, &#8220;&#8230;.No, there&#8217;s not!  Calm down, Miss Roxanne.  There&#8217;s no radiation!&#8221;  I said, &#8220;I&#8217;m telling you, there is&#8230;&#8221; He said, &#8220;Really, there&#8217;s no problem! There&#8217;s no danger at all!  There&#8217;s been no announcement on TV!  Stop wooooooooorrying!&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>69 thousand people were stranded at Tokyo Disneyland this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, after I got home, I rode my bike a lot and played DDR in Kawasaki, but I wasn&#8217;t feeling in the dancing mood. I wanted to go to the gym, but then I heard about the nuclear power plant going critical, so I went back home. Sunday morning, I was reading twitter and saw&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earth-quake-and-aftermath","category-10","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}