3/11/2016

5 years on from the Great East Japan Earthquake

2011.3.11, 14:46.

5 years ago, my 2-year-old son was taking a nap in the bedroom, and I was swaying from side to side slowly giving my 9-month-old daughter a piggyback to let her take a nap.

Suddenly the phone rang.

"Oh no! She was about to sleep. Who is calling at a time like this?"

It was the most important for me to let my children take a nap to get free time when my children were still babies.

"Hello?"

I answered the call.

"Hello. Oh, are you OK?"

It was from my mother in law.

"Oh, mother. Hi. What do you mean? What happened?"

"I have watched the new on TV just now, and it said that a very big earthquake occurred."

"Really? When and where? I didn't know about it at all. Wait a minute, I am going to turn on the TV."

I turned on the TV and watched NHK news.

"What's that...?"

I will never forget the scene which I watched.

A lot of houses, cars, everything was being washed away by Tsunami.

What an unbelievable disaster!

I worried where the people who lived in those houses were.

I told my mother in law that we were safe and I hung up the phone.

It was the Japanese intensity scale of 3 around here, but I didn't notice the quake because I was swaying from side to side with my daughter.

The maximum was Japanese intensity scale of 7 in Miyagi prefecture, and the magnitude was 9.0.

When I watched the Hydrogen explosion of the Fukushima first Nuclear Power Plant on TV news on March 12, I thought that I wonder what on earth would happen now.

Huge number of victims are still now living under serious situation.

After 5 years.

Are Nuclear power plants really safe?

What can we do for the victims?

I really hope they will be able to get back to normal as soon as possible.



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3 comments:

  1. Hello Kumi-san,

    Informative article, Google+ is full of posts and pictures about the earthquake. In general I think nuclear power is safe (excluding the issues of waste storage), but nuclear power in a place with the ability to get large earthquakes and tsunami's is probably not safe. However Japan is in a difficult position it doesn't get a lot of power from other power sources such as wind, solar, wave etc. So Japan is left with coal power or nuclear. If Japan decided it would go to coal power stations, you only have to look at China and the smog they get to see what would happen to Japan. It is a shame because obviously wind, and waves and to a lesser extent solar are something Japan could do better to harness.

    It didn't help the situation very much that TEPCO/TODEN was less than honest in the beginning stages of the event.

    Here is a list of some of the issues found with the post:

    Part 1:

    This line:
    5 years from the Great East Japan Earthquake

    Should be:
    5 years on from the Great East Japan Earthquake

    Reason: Without the "on" the title can be interpreted as meaning in 5 years from now (5 years in the future), which clearly you did not intend.

    This line:
    My 2-year-old son was taking a nap in the bedroom, and I was swaying from side to side slowly giving my 9-month-old daughter a piggyback to let her take a nap.

    Should be:
    5 years ago, my 2-year-old son was taking a nap in the bedroom, and I was swaying from side to side slowly giving my 9-month-old daughter a piggyback to let her take a nap.

    Reason: Making it explicit that the sentence above is referring to events 5 years ago. People may determine this from the title of the post but it is generally better to make that sort of thing explicit in the first sentence. One of the reasons for this is that people will often don't read the title of an article.

    This line:
    Suddenly a phone call rang.

    Should be:
    Suddenly the phone rang.

    Reason: This is a idiom/very common phrase and is almost always said as worded above, even if there is more than one phone that could have rung.

    This line:
    It was the most important for me to let my children to take a nap to get my free time when my children were still babies.

    Should be:
    It was the most important for me to let my children take a nap to get free time when my children were still babies.

    This line:
    "I have watched the new on TV just now, and it said that the very big earthquake occurred."

    Should be:
    "I have watched the news on TV just now, and it said that a very big earthquake occurred."

    This line:
    "Really? When and where? I didn't know about it at all. Wait a minute, I am going to turn on TV."

    Should be:
    "Really? When and where? I didn't know about it at all. Wait a minute, I am going to turn on the TV."

    This line:
    I turned on TV and watched the NHK news.

    Should be:
    I turned on the TV and watched (the NHK/NHK) news.

    Reason: Often when referring to named news programs "the" is sometimes omitted. When you are referring to news in general "the" is often included. Note that the rules for this are very inconsistent:

    Examples:

    I watch NPR news (sounds ok)
    I watch the NPR news (sounds odd)
    I watch the NPR news program (sounds ok)
    I watched NPR news program (sounds odd)
    I watched the NPR news program (sounds ok)
    I watched ASAHI news last night (sounds ok)
    I watched the ASAHI news last night (sounds odd)
    I watch the news (generic unnamed news source, sounds ok)
    I watched the news (generic unnamed news source, sounds ok)
    The news from NHK was not good (sounds ok)
    The news from the NHK was not good (sounds odd)

    Note: Even some of the ones that sound odd are still commonly used by people. Don't worry if they are confusing even English people will argue over this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Part 2:

    This line:
    A lot of houses, cars, everything were being washed by Tsunami.

    Should be:
    A lot of houses, cars, everything was being washed away by a Tsunami.

    This line:
    I worried where people who lived in those house were.

    Should be:
    I worried about where the people who lived in those houses were.

    This line:
    It was the Japanese intensity scale of 3 around here, but I didn't notice the quake because I was also swaying from side to side with my daughter.

    Should be:
    It was the Japanese intensity scale of 3 around here, but I didn't notice the quake because I was swaying from side to side with my daughter.

    This line:
    The maximum was Japanese intensity scale of 7 in Miyagi prefecture, and the magunitude was 9.0.

    Should be:
    The maximum was Japanese intensity scale of 7 in Miyagi prefecture, and the magnitude was 9.0.

    This line:
    When I watched the Hydrogen explosion of the Fukushima first Nuclear Power Plant on TV news on March 12, I thought that I wonder what on earth would happen from now on.

    Should be:
    When I watched the Hydrogen explosion of the Fukushima first Nuclear Power Plant on TV news on March 12, I thought I wonder what on earth will happen now.

    This line:
    Huge number of victims are still now under the serious situation.

    Should be:
    Huge numbers of victims are still now living under serious conditions.

    This line:
    What can we do for them?

    Should be:
    What can we do for the (people/victims)?

    Reason: Made the sentence a little more explicit because otherwise it can be interpreted to mean what can we do about nuclear power stations.

    This line:
    I really hope they will be able to back to normal as soon as possible.

    Should be:
    I really hope they will be able to get back to normal as soon as possible.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for many corrections, Terry.
      It was really difficult post to write.
      How to use "the" is really confusing!
      But I am releaved that I don't have to worry about it(^^).
      Thank you again!

      Delete