Tuesday, July 17, 2007

A Gai-jin* in Japan

Typhoons and earthquakes, oh, my!

Kaitlin writes from Japan:


"Saturday and Sunday we were in the middle of a Typhoon. Monday, we had earthquakes. At 11:30 pm Monday night, Negishi felt tremors that reached 4.5 and made our beds shake. I felt like I was in The Exorcist."


Levitating Bed


Bachelor Housing Sign
Sign in front of Kait's housing

Her first typhoon was fairly uneventful.


"It was nothing more than a tropical depression as far as Florida would be concerned. Here however, they were freaking out. We were on TCCOR 1 (Tropical Cyclone Condition Of Readiness 1). This means the typhoon was right on top of us. In the middle of the typhoon the fire alarm went off and we were all sent running from our rooms in our pajamas into the very early morning rain. Talk about a wake up call."

Bachelor Quarters
She lives in this building

Kaitlin is collecting the chopsticks from every restaurant she visits and most of them are written in "Japanese letters from one of their three alphabets" so she's not entirely sure what the names actually are. She sends her love to family and friends and says she misses everyone "very, very, very much."

* A gai-jin is a foreigner, not necessarily an American but anyone who is not Japanese.

2 comments:

jk said...

yikes! scarey!

Flaurella said...

For whatever reason, I have a feeling she is pretty safe inland on a small Navy base. Apparently, the Navy has a plan and procedure for any and all things. I keep telling her that this is her lesson in big business hierarchy and trickle down and I can hear her sigh of disbelief from the other side of the world. Ha!