{"id":20218,"date":"2011-06-28T11:05:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T15:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=20218"},"modified":"2011-06-28T12:38:26","modified_gmt":"2011-06-28T16:38:26","slug":"wit-life-173-homeless-by-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/28\/wit-life-173-homeless-by-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #173: Homeless by mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is a periodic series written<\/strong><\/em> by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-03). She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shar<\/strong><\/em>es s<\/strong><\/em>ome of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.\"\"<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Almost four months have passed since the earthquake\/tsunami hit Japan, and one might think that after this amount of time things have gotten back to some semblance of normal.\u00a0 That seems to be the case for\u00a0the most part in Tokyo, where except for limited electricity usage and\u00a0the omnipresent\u00a0uncertainty regarding radation levels, it is back to business as usual.\u00a0\u00a0However, for those who lived in the disaster area, it is a different story.\u00a0 I recently spoke to a close friend over Skype, who told me about her brother who had lived with his family in Tohoku.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

They, like many others from the disaster zone, cannot be cleared to return home due to restrictions on entering areas\u00a0that exceed\u00a0a certain level of radiation.\u00a0 Instead, they have spent the last few months living a transient lifestyle and supporting themselves with aid provided by the government.\u00a0 They were allowed to stay for three months in in Tokyo’s lovely Asakusa Prince Hotel (though during Golden Week the hotel couldn’t\u00a0sacrifice the rooms and alternative arrangements were made).\u00a0 While there,\u00a0they were able to attend different forms of entertainment such as the circus, music concerts and movies, as well as receive\u00a0free meals.\u00a0 They also had unlimited visits to local hospitals\u00a0for\u00a0health\u00a0checks and monitoring of the influence from radiation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to my friend,\u00a0a good thing that came out of this tragedy is the opportunity to see her brother and his family more.\u00a0 Normally she would only see them once or twice a year for Obon or Oshougatsu, but now they had the chance to spend much time together.\u00a0 Also, despite the circumstances, the ability to take in a variety of cultural experiences at no cost was also something to be thankful for.\u00a0\u00a0His family’s\u00a0next destination is Hokkaido, where a ski lodge has offered to take them in during the off season.\u00a0 This will again be a three month stay,\u00a0after which who knows where they will be next sent.<\/p>\n

I would like to learn more about how this temporary housing\/lifestyle support system is funded.\u00a0 My friend seemed\u00a0to think it is carried out in collaboration with local governments, though it is unclear what sort of compensation these facilities are receiving for offering their services.\u00a0 Are some purely volunteer or are they all getting reimbursed to a certain degree?\u00a0 I’d be interested in finding\u00a0out such details, as well as what the long-term plan is, as\u00a0these services are certainly not sustainable forever.\u00a0 For now, I’m glad they are providing a safety\u00a0net for Tohoku citizens who have become involuntary refugees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Almost four months have passed since the earthquake\/tsunami hit Japan, and one might think that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[378,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earthquake-tsunami","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-5g6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20218"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20252,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218\/revisions\/20252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}