Earthquake and tsunami

By the mouth of the Kushiro River, lumber washed away from a mill near my house is floating out to sea as higher-than-normal swells continue to lap at the shores here in Hokkaido. Roads are closed and some towns further east towards Nemuro and southwest towards Hakodate have been flooded by the tsunami, but none of it compares to the damage and loss of life down in Tohoku.

The earthquake here felt like a gently rocking boat, which was not much more than we usually get here, but it was the length of it that really unsettled myself and my fellow teachers in the office at school. Not a filled coffeecup was unsettled, but when the shaking continued for several minutes, we really got concerned. We all realized there was going to be a tsunami for a shake that strong.

The word soon came that it was a major earthquake off the coast of Sendai and we were to send students home as most major forms of public transportation shut down. Teachers turned on the TVs in the lounges and crowded around cellphones to watch digital broadcasts, while others scoured internet news and announced the reported earthquake magnitudes and tsunami warnings.

I continuously reloaded a live webcam feed from downtown Kushiro and watched as the river—the same one that goes by my apartment—slowly swelled over its banks and flooded the touristy Fisherman’s Wharf building. I wondered if my apartment was safe.

Our school began to take in people who had evacuated and I finally decided to go home to make sure nothing had floated away. My house was fine, but the evening was filled with distant sirens and echoing loudspeakers telling residents to go to higher ground and stay away from the water’s edge.

While we didn’t suffer the damage and loss of life here in Hokkaido as in Tohoku, many residents of Hokkaido were probably watching the devastation unfold on TV and wondering if a wave or aftershock would mean we would have to flee our homes with a moment’s warning and watch our lives float out to sea. It was a stressful and restless night for many.

The sunlight of the next day showed the world exactly the extent of the destruction. Coastal towns in Fukushima look like they had been flattened by atom bombs (not to mention the very real threat of nuclear plant meltdowns there), cars are lying on top of trees on top of boats on top of planes, Miyagi is on fire. I answered a flood of emails from friends, asking if I was okay. I’m much more okay than some people, I replied, can you help them?

Richard Feynman on learning Japanese

While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour.

One day he was teaching me the word for “see.” ”All right, he said. “You want to say, ‘May I see your garden?’ What do you say?”

I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned.

“No, no!” he said. “When you say to someone, ‘Would you like to see my garden?’ you use the first ‘see.’ But when you want to see someone else’s garden, you must use another ‘see,’ which is more polite.”

“Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?” is essentially what you’re saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella’s garden, you have to say something like, “may I observe your gorgeous garden?” So there’s two different words you have to use.

Then he gave me another one: “You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens…”

I made up a sentence, this time with the polite “see.”

“No, no!” he said. “In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to ‘May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?’”

Three or four different words for one idea, because when I’m doing it, it’s miserable; when you’re doing it, it’s elegant.

I was learning Japanese mainly for technical things, so I decided to check if this same problem existed among the scientists.

At the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the office, “How would I say in Japanese, ‘I solve the Dirac Equation’?”

They said such-and-so.

“OK. Now I want to say, ‘Would you solve the Dirac Equation?’ —how do I say that?”

“Well, you have to use a different word for ‘solve,’” they say.

“Why?” I protested. “When I solve it, I do the same damn thing as when you solve it!”

“Well, yes, but it’s a different word—it’s more polite.”

I gave up. I decided that wasn’t the language for me, and stopped learning Japanese.

From Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! …Richard Feynman is awesome. And Japanese still baffles and confounds me after all these years.