Rediscovering Soil

As you will all know, February 22nd was the day that my hometown of Christchurch got seriously damaged by a pretty nasty earthquake. Liz and I were enjoying the comfortable surroundings of Starbucks in the Landmark Tower Plaza, Yokohama at the time. We had managed to get a table bathed in morning sunlight, and it felt SO nice to be sitting in the sun after such a long winter. We were discussing Liz's schedule, and I was trying to memorize which seminars she was going to at which times, when I got a text telling me about the quake. It was quite a shock, as you can imagine.

Anyway, long story short, I was very lucky that my friends and family were all ok. The city will be rebuilt, and it will be better and stronger than before. I'm excited for the future of Christchurch. For now though, it's time to let people grieve in peace, and to be grateful for what we have.
It may be 15 years before Christchurch recovers, but it WILL recover.

It's been a hard couple of weeks, but things are really looking up now, because Spring has come to Yosano. It's still only just popping its head out from beneath Winter's thick blanket, but it IS here!! The snow has melted!!! The plum blossoms are starting to provide pink and white explosions of colour, and the daffodil buds are stretching higher and higher towards the light. The days are noticeably longer and the daytime high temperatures, though still depressingly low most of the time, are getting into double digits more and more often. In a matter of weeks the cherry blossoms will BURST Into flower and Life will return to Japan. It sounds a little over-dramatic, but anyone who has ever endured a winter in rural Japan will attest to what a BIG difference the cherry blossoms make.

pink and white plum blossoms starting to flower

This winter HAS been a beautiful one. There has been a lot of snow, which really makes the mountains pretty, but it's also made getting around harder and less appealing, and now it's such a relief to see the colour of the soil and the green grass, and to see how wide our narrow roads actually are (since the piles of snow on either side made them much narrower for a good part of winter). Can't wait to smell that sweet scent of cherry blossom in the air soon. It's been a long time coming.

Today Liz and I went for a midday walk. We didn't really have any destination in mind, but we just wanted to get out and enjoy the early beginnings of spring. Along the way we visited our local shrine, which is just a few minutes walk from our house. The shrine is old (1298 years to be exact), and has an impressive pair of stone lanterns and a large stone torii gate at the entrance and a flight of stone steps leading up towards the shrine (as you can see in the photo above). Once we got up there, it was like we had stepped back into winter! There are many tall trees around the shrine (like most shrines in Japan) and so I guess the sunlight never really reaches the mossy ground there to melt the snow. There was only a small amount of snow, but it was still enough to make it feel colder up there.
We came home via the supermarket at picked up some noodles for lunch! YUM!

Tomorrow is Monday and the start of another school week. Things are winding up at school, as graduation is next week and the end of the school year is on March 24th. Really not long to go till spring break. SPRING break! SPRING!! Doesn't that sound nice?? haha