After that earthquake I decided to make peace with the Japanese on behalf of all my family and ancestors in Malaysia and the Phillipines (they did invade both nations during the war and my Nan had to hide in the cowshed to avoid being taken away by their soldiers).

Because Asians (other than monks) prefer not to accept direct charity, it was another reason I upgraded a lot of AV kit. However though I bought a lot of Japanese brands, I think only the Tascam portable audio recorder was made in Japan (even then I am not 100% sure). The Sony amp didn’t have a country of origin marker but I think it came from Malaysia (the English in the manual gave it away, as also the use of a 2 pin Europlug), and everything else was made in South China, Thailand or Singapore (even the cameras and lenses nowadays).

I also thought of upgrading a wristwatch (trying to do without one and use my phone only nearly caused me to crash my bike), as these are still usually made in Japan, but the one I was after (an aviators watch with long wave RX for every atomic clock in the world) disappeared from the market, I have a nasty feeling the factory got destroyed in the quake 😥

BTW the Chinese waited until the West had forgotten about the incident, then discreetly sent loads of useful bulk items to the area like blankets, tents, bedding etc, in special containers what opened up like a Transformers toy and converted into an emergency operations centre for distributing the items raaa

TBH I think these nations must have made enough from me to rebuild a couple of villages at least (they all suffer from earthquakes)