Back in the us of a

We landed on our feet: NYU and all my customers are calling. Olcika is back with Ofer Tchernikovski's wonderful birdsong lab where she will continue her research (neuroscience: how the Australian zebra finch learns to sing) so rudely interrupted by TEPCO. We are back in our old apartment. It's like Japan was a lovely dream with great taste sensations. The Underwater Piano Shop is in its old Ridge St. site again.

We have lots of good pianos for sale: Steinway S 5'1 which is the 8th wonder of the world because it sounds just like a 6' piano; Howard Kawai parlor grand ($5,750 all proceeds to Send A Piana To Havana); several cheap uprights, Steinway A (coming soon). Still in Japan: nicely restored 1883 Steinway ebony upright (Japan ¥1,000,000), Melodigrand miniature 67-note upright (¥90,000), Chickering 1940s console (visit it and all the lovely women who work at Seibu Piano Co. http://www.seibupiano.com/, ask them the price). And the world's oldest Steinway at http://www.fazioli.co.jp/gallery/steinway).

All piano info will be updated soon at www.tunerben.com

Underwater Piano Shop submarining back to NYC

All packed up and gone from lovely Japan, my piano shop is on a slow boat to NY. The Treuhaft family is in Budapest getting ready to return to NYC on Monday August 1st.

All pianos have been disposed of although two remain for sale: walnut Chickering console can be seen at Seibu Pianos in the TOC building at Gotanda, worth a visit if only to admire the women who do the tuning, regulating, repairs and management there. Their pianos are wonderful and cheap too. http://www.seibupiano.com/. The pretty mini-piano is also available, in Wako-shi, Saitama http://tokyo.craigslist.jp/msg/2516326111.html.
Ben

Steinway Upright Piano Saitama (Tokyo) now ¥500,000

Must sell restored 1883 Steinway E exactly like
http://www.whiteplainspiano.com/Steinway_1886_Upright_001.jpg
New ebony finish, hammers and shanks (action good to go for another century), new strings and tuning pins on excellent original pinblock and board, regulated to perfection at about 57 grams touchweight. Normally ¥1,000,000.

The Melodigrand
http://tunerben.com/Underwater_Piano_Shop/Pianos_for_Sale.html
is reduced to ¥95,000 (Hamburg upright is sold). A restored Chickering console also must be sold up by July 20th and is also half-price at ¥120,000. Also two ugly but excellent ½ size pianos, ¥35,000 apiece.

Many household items also going, notably two amazing three-wheel bikes http://worksmancycles.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/movers.html
capable of moving a large family through Saitama.

Suddenly Saitama (Tokyo) Steinways for Sale So Stinking Cheap

Now we're leaving, Olcika and the babes next Sat. July 2nd and me July 24th BUT I only have until Zsofi's birhday, Monday, June 27th to sell two of my Steinway uprights. You can see one of them here at Pianos For Sale, it's the Hamburg art piano. The other is a mahogany ivory key upright model K #116031 (1905). There's a complication. These two pianos have to be delivered without keys which must return to the US for an ivory export license. Thus I don't expect any payment until the keys are returned to Japan, maybe 3 months.

They are for sale at half the price advertised, as are most of the others which must be sold up until July 20th. gracias Ben

We have decided to leave Japan so Tuning fee slashed to ¥10,200.

We have decided to leave Japan. Tuning fee slashed to ¥10,200.
We loved our life here (all the people we've met, our new apartment, the extremely kind and hardworking teachers in the nurseries, Olga's fantastic job, my beautiful shop, and the food!), but we feel like we cannot risk the children's health - however small the risks may be. So with great sadness we are getting ready to pack up and move our operations back to New York. This is until Olcika finds another sweet job in a nice place. Any ideas are welcome.

Japan Situation per Olcika

It is probably perfectly safe for an adult who is careful about food choice to live in Tokyo right now. For example, the radiation here is twice what it used to be but still less than half of what it is in New York. So in this sense it's crazy to move. Luckily, my institute is swarming with nuclear physicists and they measure the radioactivity at the institute every hour. Also, the Health Ministry posts radioactivity values of water in every purification plant and sampled food on a website. For the last 2-3 weeks our water has been almost completely free of contamination, although we drink only bottled water just in case. The food is also mostly safe. However, every once in a while a certain food item turns up highly radioactive, like green tea leaves in a prefecture way south of us most recently. Also, a supermarket in Tokyo sold banned lettuce for 9 days by accident, and a food delivery service (like the one we use) delivered highly radioactive spinach to 70 households in our area, also by accident. And we just found out that they found hugely radioactive sludge in Tokyo that was sold as construction material, so who knows where that stuff ended up. I feel like they're trying their best, but mistakes are inevitable. And of course the soil and grass is just too scary, although it still doesn't contain uranium like the soil in Colorado. But those reactors are still going to be dangerous for a long time and every day there are a medium-big earthquakes right in Fukushima (mag. 4 and 5). I don't know, these two months and this decision have been the hardest in my life so far.
     Zsófi may be almost 6 but she behaves just like a spacy teenager (except this morning she wrote a letter to the fairies and threw it out our 2nd story window so they could find it in the flowerbed).  Ben may be 63 but he also is a spacey teenager.  

Feher/Treuhaft gangstas may return to NY

We've been back in Japan for about a week, but we're seriously considering getting out of here. We are totally heartbroken since we love everything about this place: people, Olga's sweet job, our new fantastic apartment (which we furnished from zero a month before the earthquake), nurseries, schools, teachers, food food food (which, of course, is ruined now) and Ben's beautiful piano shop (soon expecting pianos). The air is fine, water okay, but the veggies (and SEAFOOD) cannot be trusted and there's radiation in the soil/grass, so the children cannot go to the playground and the park. We're now buying food from western and southern Japan and abroad, but it's hard to live like this for a long time (eg. without eating out) and Olga's tired of always worrying about safety and everything the kids touch and eat.

     Nothing's definite yet, Olcika's talking to her boss tomorrow, but we will most likely be looming.

We are returning to Wako-shi this Wednesday May 11th BUT we may leave again July 2nd.  We haven’t decided yet but Olga is considering suspending her research contract for one year while Japan stabilizes the nuclear reactors and comes to a realistic assessment of the dangers to small children of eating from the sea and from farms affected by the radioactive releases.  

We have been reading that nobody is changing their diet, partly out of amazing solidarity with the residents of Fukushima and partly out of false security promoted by TEPCO and their friends in government (I guess this is unfair, the government also wants to avoid panic).  But there’s a risk that twenty years from now Izzy and Zsófi could develop leukemia or other unimagined horror to their offspring because we needlessly fed them traces of weird sparkly isotopes.

Anyway we hope we will change our minds once we arrive in our beloved Japan. 

Indecision 2011

Every hour we change our minds – Olga’s scientific/obsessed, mine stunned – about whether to return to Tokyo May 2^nd  (and how many of us should go).  We’re getting advice from Olga’s colleagues, scientists with kids, who left very early on in the disaster and who have now scattered to Europe and Australia. We may return on a trial basis but leave Zsófi in her Hungarian paradise with her grannie and send for them in June.  If it looks like we’re able to get certifiably non-sparkly food and water for Izzy and ourselves we'll stay a year and hope for smaller earthquakes.  A container ship holding 6 pianos (and much of my NYC Underwater Piano Shop) arrives Tokyo April 23rd.  

Out of Asia

We're on Cathay Pacific #507 out of Osaka traveling (36 hours) via Hong Kong then Paris to Budapest on Air France.  The news looks better today if only because Libya and scandals pushed us off the top story in The Australian and the NY Times.

     Olcika is tired and thinking that when the bad news was coming relentlessly she was really worried for us and our friends, but now there’s a lot of uncertainty and we hear from experts that this purgatory could go on for a long long time.  When will we be able to bring Zsófi and Izzy back into anything but a dicey situation? Maybe not even one or two months from now.  For the moment our return is set for April 9^th.

    We mailed our housekeys home for anyone to come in and use up our food if they need it, we hear there are shortages in Tokyo.  

News from Nara, 500 miles from reactors

My sister Dinky Romilly is worrier in chief and had this conversation with Olcika at 10:40 AM on Tuesday (11:40 pm Tuesday Ides of March Japan time (yesterday), sums up the situation.

Olga:  we bought plane tickets. the earliest we could get them for was friday.  we're leaving for Budapest Friday evening.  it should be okay here until then although just half an hour ago there was an earth quake here too

 me:  oh shit, this is so terrifying and also so horrible for your research

Olga:  yes, i'm going to lose everything. it sounds like all the others keep working, which makes me feel funny, but there's no way I can do it.  all the foreigners have left.  I am so sad for our Japanese friends, I can't even think about them, but I'm still hoping they can contain the situation.  after all, those damn plants have been shut down for a while

 me:  The sadness is total. I cried when I read that you danced Friday morning with good data results and then your experiment was shut down.  of course the deep deep sadness also goes to all the affected Japanese, which at this point is basically everyone and things are only getting worse

Olga:  yes, I am very scared. our friend's husband is Japanese and he stayed behind and he still thinks it will be okay.  this is the hungarian woman we are traveling with but she is so worried about him.  still, she feels that she has to get her kids to safety above all

 me:  I can't even sleep thinking of all the short term and long term implications for you and Benjy - the research, the pianos, your stuff in Saitama. Such a huge problem, also for your friend. I heard a rumor that the French are pulling out all their nationals from Japan

 Olga:  yes, it's ironic that Benjy was working on getting his pianos there for months and they finally just left.  yes, I am very sad about our apartment and things too. I know I shouldn't be, it's just things, but it's our life in a way, my cd collection. whatever.  but at this point, nothing catastrophic has happened and I am still hoping and hoping that the situation won't get too bad before it gets better.  I don't know. I can't believe our life just got turned upside down in so little time.

me:  Yes, stunning. I gather you'll leave your things in Saitama, hoping to return?

 Olga:  yes. Our ticket now is for 3 weeks, and I believe that we will know by the end of this time if it's safe to return or we have to make long-term arrangements.

 me:  that sounds good. what does the lab director say?  I've been listening to various experts on Democracy Now, Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds Associated, Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action in Kyoto and some others.  I can't tell if the information we are getting is better than what you get or not

Olga:  we've been listening to Japanese government officials, who seem frank enough, but they certainly don't want to cause panic, so they tone down everything.  but i watch the numbers, and so far it's nothing horrible.  the wind is now blowing out to the ocean i think.  it was blowing towards tokyo for a while.  Dinky, i couldn't find the plug for my computer, and it's running out of juice, so i have to close it, i'm sorry I'll talk to you soon, perhaps tomorrow morning? evening your time?  Izzy is sick with a fever and wheezing by the way. typical.  Lots of love, olga

 me:  double shit. I'll talk to you tomorrow. go to bed