now for the story behind the picture

A couple of weeks ago, someone I met briefly called me and asked if he could pass along my name to someone who was looking for a non-Japanese woman married to a Japanese man to be interviewed. I said sure, no problem and forgot about it. That afternoon someone called me and asked me some questions about my life and lifestyle here. She said that she was head researcher for a national tv show. (At least, I think that’s what she said. All of our conversation was in Japanese, so sometimes I wasn’t 100% sure of what was going on…) She was trying to find out if there was anything special I did while living here that showed I was from Canada, or if I somehow (visibly) incorporated my culture into my lifestyle here. I couldn’t really think of anything off hand, but she asked me some questions etc. I could only think of things like Thanksgiving or Christmas, when I try to make a special dinner and we have Atsunobu’s relatives over. After that I didn’t hear anything for about a week, so I mostly just forgot about it. Then on Sunday, someone else phoned and asked if I could send some pictures of the family and the house (as soon as possible) so that he would have something to show at his meeting on Monday. He wanted to know if we would be available to be on tv…
Now (as most of you may know) I’m not extremely technically minded and trying to download a bunch of pictures from my digital camera onto a computer that I (for the most part) cannot read was not my idea of a good time. So I asked my good friend Natalie (cheers) to come over and be our camera person and she did it all very cheerfully. She took pictures (very patiently, Hiroki needed some coaxing), and then she helped me download them onto my computer. Changing the size of the pictures in order to email them was my next problem. Natalie went through it on her computer to show me what steps to take (not being able to read can be very frustrating), and it still didn’t work. In the end, after spending a long (really long) time trying to help me, Natalie ended up going home and changing the size and emailing the pictures to me, which then emailed to the man who called me on Sunday evening. It was painful…
I ended up staying up late on Sunday messing around with the computer trying to do this. That’s why I was awake around midnight, when the second earthquake of that day hit. There was a little one around 7ish, while we were eating dinner. (Hiroki didn’t seem to notice, he was too absorbed in trying to bite my knee, which was good because he was under the table (the place you’re supposed to be in an earthquake). The next one, around midnight was of the same magnitude, but was much longer. Not a good feeling. We actually had one this morning, too, at school. It wasn’t very big, but it makes you feel like you’re dizzy or like you’re not altogether sure that everything’s moving or if it’s just you. (Especially after it comes.) Any little movement feelk like maybe it’s happening again (or am I just feeling kind of dizzy again?)
Anyway, now we’re waiting to find out if we’re going to be on tv or not. I’m not entirely sure that I want to be on tv, especially speaking Japanese, but I think it might be a good experience. And if it doesn’t happen, no big deal. Well, enough for now.

the 3 of us hanging out