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Monday 25 April 2011

Sale gone through

Dear Friends
You're still munching Easter eggs but here we're hard at work. The Golden Week holiday starts on Friday 29th so only four days to go before the shutdown. And it's the end of the month so we're trying to pay our bills on a much reduced income. Mr Micawber was famously sixpence down and in misery - we're in a far worse state than that. Not a good way to repay Rengo Co. Ltd., our new owner as of today. The money came in (to the property company Tohoku Asset Management) as planned, and I am deeply relieved and grateful that the sale of the box business has gone through.

Not that that means I can chuck in the towel just yet. I'm still in charge until the AGM at the end of May and our new owners want a lot of information - right now- so we are very, very busy.

Yesterday I went to the cemetary to tidy up the grave as I'm expecting visitors on Friday. It's the anniversary of Naochika's death (23 years ago) and two of his close friends are coming to visit. One works for Mitsubishi Nuclear Power (Naochka used to work there for a while) so I'll be interested to hear what he has to say. Anyway, back to the grave. I always buy the flowers at the stonemason's and he was telling me his house has to be pulled down. He didn't have earthquake insurance (even though the government has been promoting it for several years making it tax deductible) and grants only cover the demolition costs. Two of our staff are in the same boat: old houses just not able to withstand the quake. 

By the way, the cherry blossoms at the cemetary were stunning. I have never seen so many cherry trees.

Bad news is that Sakubuta Park in Koriyama is closed. They've started monitoring radiation levels in parks now and this lovely little park famous for its cherry blossoms has for some reason a level of 3.9. (Remember, you're only allowed one hour outside in an area of 3.8.) And the headline in this morning's paper was that all the animals in the 20km no-go zone are to be slaughtered (including those roaming free you saw in that video a while back said to have been terrorising those residents returning to pick up their belongings!). But the 100 or so horses which feature in the samurai horse festival in Soma every summer are to be spared and moved to another area.

That's it from Koriyama tonight.
Love to you all.
Anne

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