The Seaweed Must Be The Reason

An earthquake struck southern Sakhalin Island this morning, just above the northernmost point of Hokkaido, and therefore Japan.  Before you ask, I'll go ahead and say that I didn't feel anything since it was a good 200 miles away, but I would like to mention a couple of things about Sakhalin Island nevertheless.  First, you can actually see Sakhalin Island from Hokkaido, even though it's at least 25 miles away.  I haven't decided yet, but I might go there for my summer vacation.  In which case I would like to make a humble request to the developer of the 'Where I've been' Facebook application: please allow an option for countries that I've seen but haven't actually been to so that I can add Russia to my map.  Second, even though Sakhalin officially belongs to Russia, the Japanese seem to think it belongs to them.  In fact, I have a Japanese map of the world on the wall in my classroom and while Russia is purple and Japan green, the southern half of Sakhalin Island is actually colored white to point out the fact that it is disputed territory.  So the fact that the international media will report this earthquake as having occurred just off Russian territory will anger the Japanese to no end.  No, really.  There's a permanent exhibit in front of the museum here in Hakodate dedicated to the return of the northern islands, of which I believe Sakhalin is one.  So here's my proposal to the Japanese government: just buy the islands from Russia.  Every knows that Russia is desperate for cash and, well, really anything.  So I'm sure they'd be willing to sell them.  Or, since demographic projections show that Russia will cease to exist in about 50 years, just wait.  Oh, hold on a second.  The same projections argue that Japan will also cease to exist in 50 years.  Well, someone has to blink first.  In the meantime, I'll just sit here and wait for the next earthquake.  That's a much more fun waiting game.