That's Just Ridiculous...ly On

On Saturday (March 12th) I slept in and after a while toddled off to Osu for a few hours. Sunday saw me conducting my routine of showering, shopping and idling very much as usual. Usual - now there's a word that is key in describing this weekend. To judge from the frantic kindly enquiries after my wellbeing from English friends and relations, the news seemed to imply that the whole of Japan had been thrown into pandemonium. Don't misunderstand me - the Sendai quake was an awful disaster, affecting, ruining and ending the lives of many, and people in the rest of the country were mindful of it. However, there was about as much indication of this destruction in Nagoya as there might be in Southampton after a hurricane in Glasgow. A river I walked past had become murky and smelly from the pits and pieces dislodged by the vibrations, a St Patrick's Day parade was cancelled, and donation boxes for quake victim relief had sprung up everywhere. Those were the only signs that anything out of the ordinary had happened. I suppose it's easy to think of "Japan" as a small country in comparison to, say, China or the USA, but in fact it's still a very big place.

Monday rolled around in time, and the mood in the first class was decidedly solemn. All I just said about it being difficult to connect what was on the news to the world around us notwithstanding, consciousness of the tragedy was still there, especially since we'd been hanging out with people from Sendai not so long ago. Although this funk hung over us like a heavy fog, we managed to have a normal sort of lesson before too long, carrying on with our lives. We even had some fun afterwards in the form of a photoshoot!

First some background explanation. Since before I arrived at Nanzan a new building had been in the process of being put together. The hard-hatted, be-overalled workers were as familiar to me as the big main gate or the fountain outside the CJS office, so it was something of a surprise to find the place ("R" Building) completed and almost ready for offices to move into. The University wanted some pictures of hip and beautiful international students in these shiny new premises for use in their next prospectus/news bulletin/whatever, and naturally we of IJ600 were happy to oblige. It was a fun experience, watching the photographers select and place everyone to make sure each photo had a reasonable distribution of colours and nationalities (e.g. not too many white people wearing black bunched together). The props used to give the pictures a "studenty" feel were also amusing; they included a dummy laptop, newspapers over a year old and textbooks thicker than my arm about subjects I'd never heard of. We also had a group picture taken, which, unbeknownst to us, would be the last time we would gather together like this...