Earthquake Diary 25

Thursday, March 24
The internet connection is down this morning so I am typing this on a wordprocessing program and will past it into the blog whenever I can.

Yesterday, my wife and I left home before 8 a.m. and walked to Izumi Chuo where we, after a 15 minute wait, caught a bus toward the west. One of my wife's friends had told her that there was a small supermarket about 8 km away that was well stocked and was selling meat and many other thing. One the way the road crosses a bridge over the north/south expressway and we could see that this bridge had moved a lot during the quake but had already been repair enough to be safe. We also saw that there were long, long lines of cars at the gas stations that were scheduled to receive shipments. On our way home these lines were gone and the stations were chut up.

We arrived at the supermarket and found about 30 people waiting in line. This store was one of the few that does not have the windows covered with newspaper, so we could see in. The shelves were covered with items, where every other place we had been have mostly empty shelves. While we were waiting, a delivery truck was being unloaded the the goods put out on the shelves. After this truck left, another arrived with fresh fish.

We waited about an hour and a half, but it was definitely worth it. We got two packs of hamburger, a dozen eggs, cereal, a Chinese cabbage, and a lot of other heavy stuff. We were able to do this because of a stroke of luck. In line in front of us, we met a family from our apartment complex, they had come in a car and said that they would carry our bags home for us.

We left the supermarket and when to the nearest bus stop, but there was no bus for a long while so we started walking. At each bus stop, we checked the schudule, and when the time to the next bus was about 10 minutes we decided to wait for it. The bus stop was in front of the building that we had lived in 10 years ago and across the street from an excellent ramen (Chinese style noodles) shop. The shop was not open yet, but my wife crossed the street to see when it would open. She came back and said that it would be more than forty minutes and that she would really like to eat lunch there but there was no place to wait that would be out of the cold. As we were trying to work out a plan, the owner, who had bowed to my wife through the window, opened the shop. So we entered and had miso tanmen, which is noodles smoothered in vegetables in a miso soup. It was delicious.

When we left we decided to walk some more, repeating our previous procedure of checking times at the bus stops. We walked by a small neighborhood shopping center to use the bank and to check on the bread store. Both were closed. The building seemed to have quite a bit of damage. However, on the sidewalk outside a man with a van had set up a vegetable store. While we were checking what he had and his prices, my wife got a phone call from a friend who lives nearby. We waited for her to walk over and join us and had a long chat before proceeding.

Our next stop was another supermarket but when we got there is was closed. We decided to continue walking and check out another bread store, but that was closed, too. We then decided to walk back to Izumi Chuo.

Once at Izumi Chuo, we discovered that the Ito Yokado supermarket was still open, so we decided to enter for the first time. They have removed all of the usual stuff from inside the main entrance and have made a supermarket. We were really glad we stopped. The line was short and once inside we discovered that we could buy milk and tofu. Prices have started going up a little but they are still reasonable, consider the limits on vegetables from around the reactors and the transportation problems. I ended up carry about 10 kilograms of groceries in my backback and my wife had a large bag. On the way home we checked out a cake stop and found that it will open today,bought a couple of box lunches from the Chinese restaurant Kabo, and learned that the 7/11 was not open and there was no indication of when it might open.

There was an interesting story in the newspaper that nicely illustrates how people are coping. In one small, rather isolated village the people all got together after the quake and decided that they would not receive any outside help for a long time. So they organized and got to work. First the stone masons built a large wood fired stove and oven, while the carpenters build a building in which they could eat and live if necessary. Then the various stores and companies pooled their food and the restaurant owners took turns preparing meals. One of the companies distributes shark fins, so they were able to have shark fin soup with their meals. Also one of the cooks, a French cousine specialist, made gourmet French meals. They then started repairing the quake damage and by the time outsiders reached the village, they were living better than probably anyone in the entire area.

We were all really tired, so after the evening meal we watched TV for a short while and then went to be earlier than usual.

This morning we decided to rest today - we have everything we need. Our one project for the day is trying out the breadmaker that a friend loaned to us. Hopefully, we will be able to have hot, fresh bread later today.