Oh God, Japan

Everything going on over there is heartbreaking and increasingly terrifying, and meanwhile, I face an unknown future. This is not at all how I anticipated my (possible) pre-departure to go. I'm supposed to leave in 9 days but... who knows.

If I don't go, this messes up my whole collegiate future, not to mention puts my family out of a lot of money. It means I won't get to go to Japan at all as a Rutgers student, and I don't think I'd be able to get my East Asian Studies major either. Because I didn't take any classes this spring I'll be behind a semester. That extra semester will cost me, since I rely on scholarships to pay all of my tuition, scholarships which no longer apply after spring 2012. As of right now if I cancel everything we also lose money on the flights (only flights to Tokyo are eligible for refund or rescheduling). Without this trip, without this stone in place, everything falls apart.

Ritsumeikan University is still operating normally.
Flights are still going into Kansai.
Tokyo is a panic-stricken mess but to my knowledge, Kyoto remains calm and functioning, but also will undergo strain as people from up north travel to the south en masse.

So right now, I don't know, we just wait and watch.

Obviously my safety, my own life, is a higher priority than losing money and having to make East Asian Studies a minor instead of a major, and not graduating on time but... the way things are right now, What I Should Do is not as clear-cut as I'd like it to be. I don't know how seriously I should be frightened to go to Kyoto, I don't know exactly how dangerous it is...

And I just have to laugh ruefully at the fact that, ok, mother nature hit Japan with that earthquake, and her waters swallowed up thousands of lives as though they were nothing--that's tragic. But this nuclear meltdown stuff is all on us; that's our human invention. And it's sickening. Especially that this should happen to, of all places, the nation that was hit twice by nuclear weapons not too long ago.

And I don't know what else to say. I started packing last night but I don't know if I can go back to the task right now.