Long Distance Thoughts

March 11th, Friday, 2:46pm in Japan, (US time: 00:46 EST Friday 03/11/2011)
M9.0 Huge earthquake hit in northern part of Japan, just north of Tokyo.

I was about to go to bed and closing my email. I received email about 地震, earthquake in Japan.
I opened it and read it and same time I understood this was not one of bunch of earthquakes happening in Japan. I went on search engine to find news. Then, until around 4:00 am (US time), I was unable to go to bed. That was the beginning of the day in NYC, US.

Because I was obsessively trying to gather information right after Hurricane Katrina hit in Gulf coast region in the US, back in 2005, I was pretty much depressed. I had hard time to eat and sleep. Concerning of my friends in New Orleans were wonderful but just worrying them from the distance did nothing but being depressed. My wife was disturbed and she had to truly worry about me than people in New Orleans in the end.

Because of the experience, I decided to meet my old friend, ESL teacher Erika from Loyola New Orleans. She recently contacted me to visit from New Orleans. She wanted to videotape for my ESL experience for their website as alumni. I did not talk anything about earthquake at all. To be honest, I thought once I started talking about it, I was unable to stay focus even though once she put it on the website the footagemight seem strange. But I could not talk about my feeling.

After that, Friday afternoon, I also went out and met friends at East Village. What a strange coincidence, the two of them were also originally from New Orleans region. Emily is currently from LA graduate student to study Public Art and the administration at USC. After the Katrina experience she helped Prospect .1 and then she decided to study further Arts. Another friend who I met first time was Alicia. She is currently working as speech therapist in Boston. I must say I truly felt I was in certain destiny... why I saw three friends same time from NOLA on the day another disaster hit.

We talked about our experiences during right after Katrina. They were in the area. I was in NYC.
What we learned about was that what national news talked about or national level's concerns were slightly different from what they went through and thought about. I was not from New Orleans but I came to the US in 2000 and first three years I was in New Orleans as English as the second language student and truly fell in love with New Orleans. So, in NYC when Katrina hit, I felt my home was in emergency. I felt I was 1.5 degree of separation.

I realized I am again in the similar position to Hurricane Katrina time. I am Japanese from Japan. I am in NYC since 2005. Under this massive disaster hit in Tohoku Japan, I cannot do anything physically over there at this moment. So I feel this is kind of 1.5 degree distance/ separation.

Well, comparing to 2005-2007, what's also so different is that my English is much better particularly the spoken, we have now many social media like Twitter and Facebook. More and more we use txt everyday base. Having the social media changed whole a lot such separation.

As just one of bunch of people, I would like to do what we could do. But also I will keep thinking about what possibly we (or they) need and could do a month later, three months, a year, ten years later and more later just like I did in 2005. I am really not sure about what it is and not sure if anything might happen, but I believe not forgetting this might be the key for us.

Since I often utilize Facebook, please feel free to find me at Facebook if you are interested. The social media is still more tangible and easy to talk and understand while I still like snail snail blog, yet I was unable to update past three years as much as I wanted to do. In that sense, we can share pictures and chat in a timely manner while we can slowly develop or state and discuss on Facebook. You can find Takashi Horisaki on Facebook and please say saw it on this social dress blog if you haven't been connected.

For this Horrible disaster in Japan, I like to know what you feel, know and like to do in terms of helping each other whether or not we do anything specific.

Please understand I am not quick and active person. I spend time to think till deciding something.

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March 18th, 2011 (平成２３年３月１８日)
Takashi Horisaki 堀崎剛志

I wrote in English here because this is the message for the people not any spesific region.
Eventually I like to do so many different languages, though.