Hi, all.  Since my first message appeared in MMD, I have received
many e-mail greetings and questions from readers of the MMD.  I thank
you very much.  I will try to answer each of you, so please wait for
a while.

Mr. Philip Jamison asked me about the little music box sold to benefit
the Kobe earthquake survivors.  I am a secretary of this charity
project and we are very appreciative that many foreign people are
concerned about people who suffered from the earthquakes in Japan in
January, 1995, which killed over 6,000, injured more than 44,000 and
destroyed over 500,000 homes.

Using our network from 1996, we -- some Japanese musical box hobbyists
-- started the project to assist those suffering people and made the
little music box to contribute to this project.  The price of one piece
is \600, including \150 to the fund for suffering people.  We have sold
about 7000 music boxes up to now, and have also received many contri
butions.  We have donated \905,820 to two non-profit organizations
in Kobe city, to support isolated senior citizens and children left
[homeless?] by disease of the earthquakes.

This project will close at the end of January 1999, but we still have
music boxes in stock now and orders are accepted.  As the shipping
charge is dependent on the quantity of your order, please ask for
details at the e-mail address <halls@mxg.meshnet.or.jp>.

Also, you can see the details of this charity project and the
photographs of the little music box at

   http://www.sannichi-ybs.co.jp/MOEGI/HANSHIN/e-index.html

Cheers, Kazuo

Kazuo Murakami
Otsu, Japan


 [ Editor's note:
 [
 [ That's a wonderful story, Kazuo; thank you very much for sharing it
 [ with MMD.  A few punctuation characters were not received correctly;
 [ I fixed all except the back-slash (\).  Does the character represent
 [ US dollars?
 [
 [ See also this English-language site telling about the Moeginomura
 [ museum, "Hall of Halls", which contains and showcases antique music
 [ boxes as well as automatic musical instruments:
 [
 [    http://www.sannichi-ybs.co.jp/MOEGI/e-hall.html
 [
 [ -- Robbie