Earthquake
I woke up in a hotel near a bus terminal in Santiago de Chile, casually turned on TV, and realized the video feeds on the tv screen were from Japan.I did not understand what Chilean broadcasters were saying, but I could understand from the videos I was seeing that a big earthquake had hit my home town.I sat watching tv for 20 minutes or so, determined from the video feeds that the damages caused by the earthquake was not as serious as I had feared.I told a hotel maid who brought a cup of coffee to my room that what the tv was showing was my home town in Japan. I told her, in broken Spanish, that the magnitude of the quake was reportedly 8.9 and tsunami would hit coasts of Chile in 20 hours or so. She understood me and got upset.When I got out of my room to make a phone call to my parents (I was staying at a budget hotel with no phone), one of the quests who heard the news from the hotel maid offered me his lap-top pc so that I could contact whoever I wanted. I accepted his kind offer, even though I was in a bit of hurry to call my parents, and sent e-mails to my father and niece.I found a pay-phone at the bus terminal. An apparent instruction for international calls was posted in Spanish. I did not understand the instruction but I made a call anyway. After several attempts, the pay-phone took all the coins I had and never got me connected.Interestingly, there was an Asian girl who was trying to make a call from a pay-phone nearby. She had a Chikyu-no Aruki-kata in her hands. I spoke to her in Japanese, but it took her a little while to understand that a fellow-Japanese was speaking to her in Japanese, because my face had been badly sunburnt in the mountain. I gave up making a phone call and went to an internet cafe nearby and decided to update my Rakuten blog instead.