Today in 1995, a big earthquake suddenly hit Kobe and the Hanshin-Awaji area, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying millions of households and buildings in that area. At that time I lived in my parents’ house in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, a city in the eastern vicinities of Kobe. This entry is the record of what I experienced there when that disaster happened twenty years ago.
Tag: Kobe
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Twenty years from the Earthquake
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15 years since the earthquake / 震災から15年
日本文が後ろに続きます。
Today is the memorial day of the earthquake I was suffered from with my family 15 years ago. I was at my parents’ house in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, when the great earthquake struck the Kobe area. I can’t forget what went on, what I saw, what I did, and what I was helped at that time.
At the same time, I can’t help feeling deep sympathy with people in Haiti who are just now struggling against the natural disaster. Although what I can do for them is very limited, I sent a little amount of donations to American Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and some of similar organizations in charge of rescuing and supporting the survivors.
今日で震災から15年になります。もう「震災」といっても他でもいろいろと起こっているので「阪神大震災」と言わないと通じないかもしれませんが、私は15年前に西宮の実家で被災しました。あのときの記憶は忘れられません。
同様に、今まさにハイチで起こっている大地震の被災者の方々に深い同情を感じずにはいられません。何ができるわけでもありませんが、ともあれささやかながら募金をさせていただきました。
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Swine flu outbreak begins in Japan
Today it was announced that three high school students in Kobe, who had never been abroad before, had been suffered from swine flu. Although some people who came back from Canada were found H1N1 positive before, they were hospitalized before they got into the mainland so the virus wasn’t spread. However, today’s event prove that the virus had spread all over this country.
I feel anxious about my friends, my parents, my brother, my sister and their families because most of them live within or near Kobe and they are very close to the outbreak area.
This has taught us the important lesson that, wherever you are, there’s no safe place. It’s wrong to blame those who are going abroad, because, in Japan or in another country, you have the same possibility to have the flu.
Anyway, all that I can do would be to prepare for its national outbreak. I already got a personal protection pack from American Red Cross shop to have hand sanitizer, face masks and other prevention items. The next thing I want to do for flu prevention is … to take a leave for a few weeks to drink beer in my house 😉