Not Something You See Everyday

This post might get kind of graphic. I plan on being descriptive with what I saw this evening. Unless you work as a police officer, doctor, EMT, or in another area like that you don't usually see a great deal of blood. I saw a puddle of it coagulating on the asphalt toinght.
Perkins and I were coming home from dinner. We stopped at 7/11 because I wanted some bread for my breakfast tomorrow. Then we stopped at Ofukuro Bento-San because Perkins wanted more food. While we were on our way in we noticed that traffic was being stopped and there were some police officers and medics running around the road. I didn't get a very good look then. All I saw was what looked like something that had once been a motorcycle near the center of the lanes and two cars under the bridge leading to the International Student Center. After Perkins got his bento, we decided to get a closer look.
We went a round-about way to get up to the bridge. I had to jog my bike up the big ramp behind the building. Once we were there I peeked over the edge. The first thing I noticed was all the people standing around. There were some people taking pictures with their cell phones and small cameras. There were people talking to the police, gesticulating the way in which the motorcycle had come from. Lights were flashing from the police cars. People were standing on the side of the road, some with worried faces and others with expressions that just reflected curiosity. There were several people on the bridge next to us, and a girl walked by and grabbed her boyfriend by the arm and squeaked out, "怖い." "That's scary."
When I looked over the rail at the street below I realized what she had been talking about. There was a piece of crumpled up black cloth lying in a puddle of blood. It looked like there were some other things lying the puddle, but I couldn't make out what they were. I could only guess that they used to be attached to the person who was riding the bike. It was shaped like most puddles, uneven and rounded at the edges. But it was thicker and more reflective than a gathering of rainwater. I think Perkins and I were suddenly reminded of how mortal we all are.

Like you haven't already heard

Indeed, the inevitable has happend. The H1N1 virus has reached the shore of Japan. According to an article on the Washington Post's website the number of cases in Japan has reached 191. Schools in Kobe and Osaka were shut down. Students ended up gathering for karaoke because they had nothing else to do. Some of the owners of the karaoke clubs put up signs saying that teenagers whose schools were closed down due to the flu were not welcome there.
Here in Tsukuba, there are fliers posted all over the student service offices warning about the dangers of the flu. As far as I know, if the H1N1 virus makes it as far as Tsukuba, the school will be closed down like the schools in Osaka. We're supposed to be keeping an eye on the school's website. Suzuki-sensei, my teacher for Japanese Culture and my academic adviser here, talked to us about what to do if we felt sick. He said Tsukuba has a facility that is capable of dealing with infected persons. I'm too concerned about my allergies and school work to worry too much about catching swine flu.
Some students are hoping for school closings, but I'm not really looking forward to that. I'm hoping the school won't close. It's nice having things to do that mean something to me. Otherwise, I guess I'll just go back to messing around on the internet all day. As fun as that may sound, more than an hour or so of internet gets boring pretty quickly.
The Yomiyuri Shimbun has a fairly detailed history of some of the travel patterns of the swine flu in Japan. (Contrary to the information in the web article, Ibaraki's schools are not closed yet). With so many people living in such a small amount of space it is likely that H1N1 will continue to spread.