- Julia Sweeney: Now, we were especially concerned about this because my sister, Meg, lives in Tokushima, Japan and Tokushima is only forty miles from Kobe, which was the earthquake's epicenter. Meg's lived there for seven years and she has a Japanese boyfriend there whose name is Yamamoto and he's a sweet potato farmer and she calls him Yam for short and he doesn't speak any English so he doesn't know how funny that is."