Off tomorrow

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I'm off to Japan tomorrow. I've been to Japan many, many times before as Neil, my husband, lived and worked there for about 14 years. The wires strung across all the streets, the pink pachinko parlors, the drink machines, the sliding doors into the dark depths of a pottery shop or a soba restaurant, the frogs croaking in the rice fields, the nod of thanks when you are driving, the heavy roofs crowning the shrines and temples - these are all as familiar to me as a church nestling in a valley, a high street full of individual buildings and standard shop fronts, of folk thanking the bus driver or the cabin staff when they leave, a field scattered with sheep.

But tomorrow is different, as I don't know the Japan hit by a three-pronged fortune, the earthquake, the tsunami and Fukushima.

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