Wellness Style

Japan society enjoys the promotion of health, and each month we get advice in the form of flyer's and table tents - something we can do to have better health. One source of this is Wellness style memo. Typically I ignore the advice because it focus on stuff you should not do, like don't eat this, don't drink that, avoid doing something... eat vegetables and fish. But March 2011, the advice below was given:I think it says play Nintendo Wii tennis. And I think for the first time I accidentally found myself this weekend doing what the wellness memo said to do, play Wii, but I played other games like badminton.For more wellness info, check out the memo. This post is kind of dumb, but a simple way of showing everything is normal in the Nagoya-area.

Nagoya Grocery Store

There is not really a shortage of food in Nagoya. Local grocery stores around my apartment are asking people to limit the purchase of certain items like rice, cup noodle, can food and cooking oil. Below, the sign says one bag of rice per person please.There are empty shelfs. This is because food is being prioritized and sent to the tsunami effected areas.Below, large bottles of cooking oil have probably been sent north.Things like fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and other processed food (... frozen gyoza) are fully stocked, no problem to purchase.

Refuge Cat Update

It's been about a week and Jazzbird cat is doing well.She is behaving very good too, keeping quiet so the neighbors don't find out.She enjoys rolling around on the carpet... and sitting in the computer desk chair too.

Refuge Cat

Meet Jazzbird, a refuge cat from Utsunomiya, displace by the earthquake.At the time of the earthquake, the apartment she was in shook hard, fridge even toppled over. She belongs to a friend co-worker of mine who has moved to Nagoya for the time being.I doubt I'm suppose to have a cat in my apartment, but it's okay. Jazzbird is a very well behaved feline so lets keep this quiet. The plan is to move her to a pet hotel....

Collecting Donations in Nagoya

Donation collection started in Nagoya the day after the earthquake happen north of Tokyo. Here are people in the neighborhood of Imaike.This group of people were moving around Imaike taking donations. But different from the US, the donation boxes did not really say to what origination would receive the donation, but this may have not been determined yet.The people above are actually from a politician campaign group. The earthquake happen three days before local elections in Nagoya, this gave politicians the chance to help out while promoting there messages of change and making Nagoya better.Above is the politician, Mrs. Higashitani, making noise and collecting donations in Imaike... But make sure you know where your donations end up.

American Red Cross and other groups are collecting donations too: http://www.redcross.org/That speaker is loud!!!

****** Higashitani update, although she got 2123 votes, she was unable to pull off a win in Chikusa-ward.

Nagoya Earthquake News

Below is an image from my balcony in central Nagoya....No damage from earthquake or tsunami here, but they are still working on the construction of that temple.Above is a map showing where Nagoya is relative to the earthquake epicenter, the red X in the ocean.

A good english news source about the earthquake is NHK World: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
You can click in the upper right corner of the website, button 512K and get news broadcast.

earthquake / tsunami

There was an earthquake north of Tokyo followed by a tsunami. I was in Nagoya today, far west side of Tokyo and was not affected.Northern Japan got hit really hard, cars are being washed away, fuel storage is on fire, cities flooded.... I just wish one of these stations would broadcast some news in English.Above is the fuel depot, seen on Japanese news. This is mid-day shortly after the tsunami.Everyone is playing it safe, above is live at Tokyo station with hard hat. Many trains around Tokyo shutdown operation.