Earthquake!

This morning while skyping with Su Sien in NZ, I felt that unmistakable swaying of our apartment. I messaged her "earthquake!" and ran out from the study to see how bad it was... we hang our bananas on a little hook on a kitchen cabinet handle and the bunch was swinging happily.

I quickly sat down by the dining table, ready to turn the gas off and dive down under if it got worse. I prayed, Oh Lord please make it stop! It did after what seemed like forever (if you're experiencing an earthquake, any tremor more than 10 seconds seems like forever!). We've experienced a few tremors since moving to this apartment but nothing that felt like this one.

It was scary to be alone during an earthquake yet I was relieved at the same time... Minori and daddy were out at the nearby park, which also happens to be a designated emergency evacuation center.

I came back to the computer with a skype screen full of messages from NZ. It stopped, I assured Su Sien, and we went on to chat about natural disasters.

My prayers and thoughts go out to the earthquake victims and people of Niigata and the neighboring areas. Throughout the day, we could still feel several of the after-shocks.

Raising a girl

Imagine this:

"The #1 wish for girls ages 11 to 17 is to be thinner.

"One study of Saturday morning toy commercials found that 50% of commercials aimed at girls spoke about physical attractiveness, while none of the commercials aimed at boys referred to appearance.

"25% of high school seniors reported using illicit drugs in the past 30 days.

"Nationwide (in the US) 46% of students in grades 9 to 12 have had sex.

"14% of all 13-year-olds have had sex.

"Nearly 35% of all young women in the US become pregnant at least once before reaching the age of 20 -- almost 850,000 each year."

Quoted from: Vicki Courtney, Your Girl: Raising a Godly Daughter in an Ungodly World (Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2004), 7.

Isn't it worrying to be parents, especially of girls, at current times? While these statistics are for the US, I suspect that Japan isn't too far off. I picked up this book a few months back and finally got down to reading it. While it's targetted to parents, particularly mothers, of preteen, teenage and tween daughters, I just felt I had to read it now to help prepare myself for what I have to battle ahead. I'm still only in the midst of it but I'm already convinced of what I used to joke about all along... the world is out to get the girls.

And oooh.... the weight of parental responsibility! Chasing after a 2-year-old toddler even when pregnant doesn't even begin to describe it.

Trip to Sendai

We traveled to Sendai two weeks ago to meet up with daddy's family to remember the unexpected passing of Uncle Shunya in 2005. This year, M managed to not dance to the beat of the shrine drums during the ceremony but still couldn't help herself from swaying a little and shrugging her shoulders to the rhythm.

Two weeks after, M still talks incessantly about her favorite cousin Kanata.

Here was our trip, in photos. Please click on the photos themselves to see the bigger version.

During our journey, we made a pit stop at an R&R called "Minori." Now what are the odds of that?? M's name is not written the same way in Japanese though.


2-year-old Minori gets along with 6-year-old cousin Kanata.


And it's not difficult to see why.


Our dinner on the second evening at the ryokan. A surprise birthday cake awaits unsuspecting Aunty Sanae! She is sitting on Minori's left.


M didn't look very happy when we had to say goodbye on the third day. Here's a photo mosaic of the kids with their grandparents and grandaunt because there isn't a single photo in which EVERYONE looks at the camera.