Earthquake Diary 111

 I walked through the torii and onto the grounds of Toshogu. The main shrine building was straight ahead and up a flight of stairs. Everything looked normal at first.

 Once I reached the stairs, however, I found that all of the stone lanterns had fallen over and the separate pieces were now scattered on the ground.

 Once passed the remains of the lanterns the shrine again looked normal.

 At the top of the stairs, I could finally see the shrine itself.

 The doors were open into the main hall and I could see the altar. It was very small and unimpressive, lit only by two floor lamps. There must have been, or would be, some sort of ceremony because a number of cushions, zabuton in Japanese, were placed in front of the altar. Again everything looked quite peaceful and normal.

 However, as I moved around a bit to the side, I saw a blue tarp and realized that the whole side of the shrine was gone with only the inside wall remaining.

 I moved again and discovered that the wall on the right side was in even worse condition. As you can see, it is tape and tarp, the definitive markers of earthquake damage. The priest that you see is following a young couple and a baby into the shrine. I assume that the baby is having the formal introduction to the god ceremony, one similar to what my granddaughter had at our local shrine.

Off to the side another building had lost its doors and was covered by not a blue tarp, but clear plastic sheeting that had partly fallen away.

Today is a very important day. My classes begin again after a three and a half month break. The school year normally begins during the first few days of April with classes starting in the second week, but this year the disaster has caused everything to be delayed. This afternoon I will meet two new classes. I will then have two classes each day for the rest of the week. With the exception of one group that I will see twice, each class will be a different group of students. This year instead of the usual 15 week semester with some vacation days scattered around, we will have 13 straight weeks of class with no vacation days at all. This means that I will be teaching two classes a day four days a week until the end of July. Then I will have about six weeks of vacation. However, this year we expect that there will be a power shortage, so the use of air conditioning will be discouraged. I expect that it will be a long hot six weeks.