The earthquake

I have wanted to write about our earthquake experience, though we were so safe up here in Hokkaido. I will try to write briefly. This is just to record what it was like for us up here in Hokkaido, far from the disaster. I will write in bullet form to try and stay brief!

• I was at work, sitting at my desk in the teacher's room of a school in Sapporo. Many kids were in their classrooms getting ready to go, or out in the hallways cleaning. The earthquake started at 2:46 p.m., but for us in Hokkaido it would have been slightly later.
• The shaking was very large and side-to-side, clearly a very powerful earthquake, and it went on for approx. 5 minutes. It seemed to just go on and on. I was on the 2nd floor of the 3-story school building. I was not afraid for my health as such, since the shaking was not violent - but it was clearly a "big event" and there was a lot of worry, consternation, shouting, etc.

Japanese names (1) - Girls' names from nature

I spent the morning digging up some of my potatoes! About 1 big grocery bag full, with some nice-sized ones amongst them. That was a little over 1/3 of the total harvest, and there is about 1/3 left to harvest now (I harvested the first 1/3 over a month ago).

I wanted to do some posts on Japanese names, because many Japanese names have a nice meaning. There are various trends in Japanese names, as with English names. Right now I will focus on some currently-popular girls' names from nature.

The names listed here are all names of girls I have met at work or at my kids' schools. Some of these names can be found in older generations, too. Some of these names are quite popular, and some may be rare.

Girls' names from nature:

Sumire (Violet)
Kurumi (Walnut)
Hinata (Sunlight)
Kokoro (Heart)
Sakura (Cherry Blossom)
Hotaru (Firefly)
Hana (Flower)
Yuri (Lily)
Runa (Moon = "Luna")
Riria (Lily = "Lilia")
Kaede (Maple)
Yume (Dream)