Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?: Places that don't exist anymore.

My inboxes exploded with Japan. My closest loved ones--parents, boyfriend, close friends--kept telling me how glad they were that I wasn't overseas anymore.

Can you imagine if you had been over there when that happened?

What would I have done if I had lost you?

You were JUST there!

I never felt unsafe while in Japan, and I don't feel an earth-shattering, undying gratitude that I'm not dead right now. Being a quasi-Calvinist, I tend to think that my life is in God's hands, and if He would have wanted to wash me away with Sendai, then that's what would have happened. But, thank you Jesus that I'm still alive. As I overheard a wise woman once say, "There's no place safer than in the center of God's will." Tell that to your Middle East missionary friends.

Other people messaged me and simply asked me how I was doing. How the disaster has made me feel.

Enjoying ourselves in Matsushima.

To understand how I feel now, you would have to understand how the Japan trip as a whole made me feel. My time in Japan currently feels like it was some sort of extended dream. It was a time where I learned the most about myself, and stretched myself in unexpected ways--emotionally, spiritually, culturally. The destruction in Japan--especially the Sendai area--makes the experience a whole new level of surreal. It almost officiates that some of my experience was a dream, because now there are some places I cannot return to. I can't show my friends the giant mall where I shopped at with Blythe. We got lost on the way back to the inn from the mall--the laundromat, travel agency, and hospital where we stopped to ask for directions aren't there. I can never stay at the same Ryokan (traditional inn--tatami floor, paper walls, low tables, indor sento) again. And, I hate to think of this, but: what about all the people who worked there?

The destruction in Sendai is confusing, and not as emotionally gripping as I would have expected. It has left me feeling hazy and unsettled, but not heartbroken. Maybe it's because we only spent a few days in the area. Now, if Tokyo or Nara would have been hit, that would have emotionally gripped me on an entirely different level. And if (God forbid) Niigata had been hit, many people I'm friends with could have died.

I didn't take many pictures when we were in Sendai, but it is still haunting to look at places that literally don't exist anymore.


Ryokan. Traditional inn. Super cool experience.


The outside of the Ryokan.


I remember being not that impressed with Sendai--It wasn't as industrious as Tokyo or as pretty as Kyoto.

The indoor-outdoor mall where I bought 90% of my souvenirs.

Matsushima is one of the three most scenic places in Japan--there are hundreds of little islands scattered throughout a bay. Basho wrote about this place on one of his journies. I'm not sure what is left of Matsushima. I've tried to look it up online, but haven't quite figured it out. My guess is that most of this area was destroyed, too.