<April 8-12>
I am in Kobe and Osaka again. Escalators are working here! Wow! What a luxury! In Tokyo, there are no longer planned blackouts. But in order to save energy, most escalators are stopped and only elevators work for the disabled and the elderly. Carrying baggage is not easy.
It is the most beautiful season in Japan. From Tokyo to Osaka by bullet train, I saw so many cherry blossoms.
Usually people enjoy eating and drinking under cherry trees in this season.
This year, people are quiet.
One of my friends wrote that cherry trees are too insensitive to bloom as if nothing happened.
A readers' column in a newspaper wrote that cherry trees must be sad because not many people care about them much this year.
Animism? Yes. I like animism. We have lived with nature, not conquered or controlled nature.
I had a good time with my old friends under the cherry blossoms. It was a sunny and warm day.
Two of them had already been to the disaster areas as mental health professionals. Both of them experienced the Kobe earthquake, but still they said they became speechless at the aftermath of Tsunami.
We all agreed that a narrow sense of trauma care is not very effective. It should not be too medicalized or psychologized.