Japan

I haven't addressed it here in this blog, but for readers who don't know me personally, we were supposed to be in Japan all last week, coming home tonight.  We had booked our flights last June (I know...we plan THAT FAR ahead of time *shrug*), made all our hotel reservations, and were in the midst of scouting things to eat, do, and see.  Then, unless you had been living under a rock, this happened.  Given the tragic circumstances and collateral damage, there was no way that we could continue on our trip.  Besides the practical and safety reasons, it just didn't feel right to go on holiday and play tourist while many people were suffering so immediately.  Instead, we went back to work and carried on, put forth airline refund requests, canceled accommodation reservations, donated to relief efforts (Jerry's company 100% matches donations, yay), and spent spare moments here and there reading about the progress, struggles, and stories (loved this story) of what was going on in Japan. 

The majority of folks that I talked to were in agreement that we did the right thing, and that they would have done the same themselves.  However a small minority brought up a point that that did cross my mind: "Don't you think that they need an economy boost so that they can recover?"  We also recieved this email in reply to one of our hotel cancellations:

Thank you very much for your email.
We have accepted your cancellation and we totally understand your concern.
*There is no cancellation fee due to the circumstances.
Just in case, we’d like to inform you the latest situation about the risk of traveling to Japan.    
Needless to say, we do not recommend visiting areas within 30km of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. To avoid unwanted worries, we recommend following the 80km guideline given out by US, UK and Korea. However, for other areas of Japan(Kyoto is 500km from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex), we want you to understand that it is safe to travel, even now.
Gregory Hartl, the spokesman of the World Health Organization (WHO) interviewed in United Nations Office at Geneva and gave comment about the radiation level in Tokyo does not represent health hazard.http://www.who.int/en/ As for Kyoto, we do not have any direct damage from the earthquake, tsunami or nuclear power plant.We are located 500km west of Tokyo and the nuclear power plant in Fukushima is 200km north east of Tokyo.
*Italian newspaper recently announced that the radiation level in Tokyo is 0.04ms (which is lower than that of Rome 0.25ms).
*NOTE: Rome's radiation level is absolutely safe.http://www.rainews24.it/it/news.php?newsid=151021

For Japan to recover quickly from this disaster, we kindly ask travelers to maintain the usual visits to Japan.We, as an hostel, are very much willing to support northeast Japan. However, if all the tourists are gone from Japan, we can no longer exist.(Unable to support them or even ourselves.)
For this reason, your visit to Japan in April, May, or anytime soon is very much welcomed and needed to support Japan.
*Excessive warnings by the foreign media is slowing this this down. If this continues 2 to 3 months, Japanese people and companies will no longer able to support each other, financially.
If you could ever rethink about your cancellation of your trip to Japan, please do it for us.Your support is very much appreciated. 
Thank you very much for you time and support.Best regards from Japan,
Capsule Ryokan Kyoto

Sigh.  I'm sad that small businesses (further away from the devastated regions) that depend on the tourist economy to survive are financial victims of the collateral damage.  I was pretty bummed for a while- disappointed that I couldn't go, and sad of the impact on small businesses because people such as myself weren't going.  I really, really want to visit Japan in the future to help them recover.  Now may not be the time, but Jerry and I surely see a trip there in our future.

On a sort of related note, my in-laws' Mediterranean cruise recently got rerouted from Egypt to Turkey, and back in 2001, my mom, grandma, and I were due to fly out of Berlin a couple days after 9/11 happened.  Needless to say, many flights were canceled and we had to extend our stay for another week.  Our 24 hour flight home looked like this: TXL-ZRH-SFO-LAX.  Whew, that was quite a memorable journey!  It felt so good to finally be home (and then a few days later, I moved into Rieber Hall).

Have you ever had to cancel or make changes for a trip due to unforeseen circumstances?