Welcome to the new day, be thankful you are in it because so many are not

"Welcome to the new day, be thankful you are in it because so many are not"

This was Jeff’s first tweet on 12 March, 2011.  For some weird reason it was picked up by TV3 and used as part of their morning programme.  We missed it because we were watching NHK.

Have you ever felt like things were just getting better and then, WHAM! something else hits you?  That’s how we felt last night after watching large parts of the North East Coast of Japan being obliterated by a grossly unrelenting and indiscriminate tsunami after a massive earthquake which lasted more than 2 minutes.

We heard the news just as we were getting ready to watch the Crusaders bash the Brumbies.  I had a quick view of the Twitter feed and saw there had been an earthquake in Japan. I just thought it was someone re-Tweeting something from the smaller quake 2 days before and ignored it.  But then mr15 said pretty much the same thing and alarm bells went off – something is not right!  So I went back to the twitter feed and immediately reached for the TV remote and was able to watch the start of the calamity and its continuum live as it happened. We were left numbed, the country we love so much and lived in for 19 years (Naomi much longer!) was being destroyed before our eyes.  Our hearts sank as we realised their hardship would be many fold what we are going through.  It was a horrible evening that we hope we never have to relive. We forgot about the rugby.

Many people have asked after our friends and relations in Japan.  Naomi’s parents live in Osaka and her wide family in Kyushu and Tokyo and thankfully they are all safe.  We also have many friends in Soka City, Saitama Prefecture where we lived and Jeff worked, Tokyo where Naomi worked and the mountainous inland part of Fukushima Prefecture.  Luckily our friends have been in areas not seriously affected although they have all said how scary it was.

Our hearts go out to everyone in Japan, stay safe, stay safe.

We live in unimaginable times but we must go on, and this was reflected in Jeff’s first tweet of the morning.