Always Remember

Obviously the situation in Japan right now isn't news really to anyone. The devestation is enormous and worse yet, the catastrophe is ongoing. Crisis at the reactors, powerful aftershocks and the threat of another earthquake looming is all still present. I've been constantly following it since last Friday because I do have friends there, some of my favourite artists are from there and it's a place I've wanted to visit for years. But all that aside people are suffering and they've lost so much, and I'll be honest it bothers me that people here seem to have no reaction to it. Their lives go on while the deathtoll somewhere else rises. It's not to say we should completely stop our lives and mourn but people seem to have a certain detached sympathy when it comes to tragedies around the world away from us. We should never forget any tragedy that happens anywhere, and we should try and do all we can to help even if it's only a little thing. We should move past our old habit of only caring for our own and open ourselves up to helping each other. We're all on this planet together. I don't buy into the notion of 'I can't do anything'. Even just spreading information for donating is doing something - every person had the potential to spread the information to someone who could use it. Not even a day after the quake GACKT blogged and announced he was starting a charity called Show Your Heart to help with relief efforts. In the time between then and now he's not only started the charity, established a charity account with the help of NHN Japan (an online game and internet company who worked with him on DRAGONEST), raised 101,100,893円 ($1.25 million US) and gathered a list of support from fellow Asian artists. He's not the only one - various idol groups and talent agencies have also donated substantial amounts of money for relief efforts, and many Japanese artists have turned their personal twitter accounts into information sources and constant well-wishes. It's really admirable how the whole country is coming together.

So what am I doing, you might be wondering. I started a charity effort awhile ago called A Dream We Chase which right now I'm tring to get the word about and drum up support so I can support various charity efforts any way I can. Right now, obviously, we're aiming to help support Show Your Heart. I've linked up my ArtFire store which has several bracelets for charity efforts and most specifically this one - My Heart for Japan. I'm also looking to do online auctions in the near future and aid and donations are always welcome there :) I also gave a small hand to Dog Bless You who are sending search and rescue dogs to Japan to help find survivors. And lastly, a list of links I hope people will check out, pass on and contribute to:

Japan Earthquake Animal Relief
Animal Refuge Kansai
Animal Miracle Foundation Network
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Perspectives

I went to bed last night/this morning with a much different post I was going to put up here when I woke up today. I don't feel quite right posting that right now, so I'll save it for another day. It just doesn't feel quite appropriate with what's going on in Japan right now. I woke up to the aftermath of the whole earthquate and tsunami and GACKT having just blogged and fans could stop fretting. The whole situation is just devestating, it's awful. I've had BBC UK streaming on my comp since I woke up and it's just mind-boggling what's happened. Sendai looks so devestated, and the whole reactor issues, it's scary. I'm thankful that a lot of the tsunami warnings around the world are going down and one streaming camera I was watching went offline, probably because nothing was going to happen. Someone had set up a camera so people could see the effects of the coming tsunami on the Cali coast. So much going on in the world, seems like it's slowly but surely rippling all around. Everyone was counting on this year being a good year, I hope it's just a really late starter.

It makes me happy though that one of the first things a lot of jrockers and idols and such seemed to do was find a way to let their fans know they were all right. Jpopasia has a list of all JRockers accounted for, and Arama has a list of other artists accounted for. That's quite a list. I sometimes wonder if something like that happened in North America if celebrities here would be as eager or quick acting to let fans know they were okay, or if they'd be more focused on themselves. Probably not a fair assessment, but it just seems like a lot of artists here maintain that gap between fans and themselves and keep themselves at a distance. Meanwhile Asian celebs seem to make more of an effort to reach out and shrink that gap some. This isn't the time for that though, I'm just glad that a lot of them are okay and alive.

I hope the earth settles soon, so the people can really start recovery and rebuilding efforts without worrying about the ground shaking beneath their feet. My heart goes out to them, especially to fellow Dears in Sendai.
 

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