(no subject)
(x-posted on my other blog - normally I'd just do a separate article, but I can't seem to come up with anymore things right now)
Fourteen years may seem rather long, but some memories just don't fade away.
I usually don't go off writing serious stuff - I do enough of that for classes.
If there's any day or time that I do feel like writing something serious, that'd be today, just because.
I don't go off talking about my life so far in great details unless I've been asked to do so, and even then I only do it when I feel the necessity to do so.
So a lot of people think I grew up here in Vancouver (well yes, I have been, and still am going to school here for the past however many years), but there was a time about fourteen years ago when I spent time in Kobe, Japan.
It was just a coincidence, a really unpleasant coincidence, that my family and I happened to be in Kobe on January 17, 1995 - to become a victim and a survivor of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.
It might be hard to imagine how it's like being there without actually being there - a sudden roar coming somewhere outside but not being able to tell what the heck it is, then the sound of plates and cutlery falling and crashing onto the kitchen floor. Screaming at my brother to cover his head with his blankets and pillow, though now that I think of it, that wouldn't have been much protection had that large crystal placed on the top of the shelves right above our heads fallen off - it was pure luck that our heads, or rather, our bodies are still fine.
It's been long enough that I no longer fear power outages, pitch darkness, or anything else that reminds me of this disaster which killed 6434 people. I know my memory of the quake is slowly fading year by year, but that may simply be because of the fact that I'm still alive, and so are the people close to me. What if my brother had become the 6435th victim?
There's only so much that an individual is capable of doing, but if there was one thing that I may be able to do as a survivor, is perhaps to keep remembering and to spread the word. I can't let myself forget this - as people from the newer generations grow up without the knowledge of this catastrophe, it is only those who have the knowledge and those who have experienced it who can pass these stories on to them.
If this strikes anyone's interest, perhaps take a look at the Wikipedia article.
And thank you to those who read this to the end.
Fourteen years may seem rather long, but some memories just don't fade away.
I usually don't go off writing serious stuff - I do enough of that for classes.
If there's any day or time that I do feel like writing something serious, that'd be today, just because.
I don't go off talking about my life so far in great details unless I've been asked to do so, and even then I only do it when I feel the necessity to do so.
So a lot of people think I grew up here in Vancouver (well yes, I have been, and still am going to school here for the past however many years), but there was a time about fourteen years ago when I spent time in Kobe, Japan.
It was just a coincidence, a really unpleasant coincidence, that my family and I happened to be in Kobe on January 17, 1995 - to become a victim and a survivor of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.
It might be hard to imagine how it's like being there without actually being there - a sudden roar coming somewhere outside but not being able to tell what the heck it is, then the sound of plates and cutlery falling and crashing onto the kitchen floor. Screaming at my brother to cover his head with his blankets and pillow, though now that I think of it, that wouldn't have been much protection had that large crystal placed on the top of the shelves right above our heads fallen off - it was pure luck that our heads, or rather, our bodies are still fine.
It's been long enough that I no longer fear power outages, pitch darkness, or anything else that reminds me of this disaster which killed 6434 people. I know my memory of the quake is slowly fading year by year, but that may simply be because of the fact that I'm still alive, and so are the people close to me. What if my brother had become the 6435th victim?
There's only so much that an individual is capable of doing, but if there was one thing that I may be able to do as a survivor, is perhaps to keep remembering and to spread the word. I can't let myself forget this - as people from the newer generations grow up without the knowledge of this catastrophe, it is only those who have the knowledge and those who have experienced it who can pass these stories on to them.
If this strikes anyone's interest, perhaps take a look at the Wikipedia article.
And thank you to those who read this to the end.