The 2011 Sendai Earthquake: A Personal Tale from Kanagawa
I think this is a good occasion to dust off the old LiveJournal. Now that I've gotten home and calmed down, let me tell you of my day.
I was in my 7th floor office building in Kawasaki when the earthquake struck at 2:46 PM local time. The shaking started gradually at first, and it reminded me of another, smaller earthquake that occurred just a couple days ago. The shaking normally leveled off at just-uncomfortable level, but this time it kept growing. There are large cabinets behind me that are set on rails so that they can slide left and right, and they started crashing into each other. The shaking just got more intense. This is gonna be uncomfortable, I thought to myself. That was only the beginning.
About a month prior, we held an emergency drill. I then did something I never thought I'd ever have to do seriously: I donned my United-Nations-blue safety helmet and crawled under my desk. My heart pounded about as wildly as the shaking. I pulled out my smartphone to email tsunderella to see if she was safe, but the cell phone networks were of course experiencing heavy traffic, so it took a few tries to get an email through.
The shaking must've lasted well over a minute. It finally subsided enough for me to get up from under my desk. When I peeked out again, I could see most of my other coworkers also wearing their helmets. An announcement came on telling us that an earthquake had occured (duh) and to await further instruction. We tried to get back to work, since nothing fell down and no one seemed hurt.
Then, the first aftershock came. It was nearly as big as the actual earthquake, so we got under our desks again, frantically emailing friends and loved ones. I also took the opportunity to check my earthquake information app I had downloaded just days prior when the last earthquake hit. It reported the quake was magnitude 7.9 at that point, which was the worst I'd ever seen in my time here. At this point, I noticed my smartphone battery was down to 40%. Not a good sign.
We evacuated the building after the aftershock settled down. Other smaller aftershocks continued, making me seasick (buildingsick?) a little. Once we filed down the stairs and out into the grassy courtyard of my office building, it started raining lightly. Great. Luckily, I brought my foldable umbrella, so it wasn't too bad for me. Even luckier, the rain stopped after a few minutes. We stayed outside for probably about an hour, and then the disaster prevention team for the building announced that it was safe to return to work. I decided to go back inside with some coworkers (many others had actually already gone home at this point), as it was getting cold out.
Incessant aftershocks greeted us when we got back to the building. I could only handle it for the last hour of the normal workday, so I decided to go home at 5:20. I had been planning on doing overtime because we are working on a huge project due Monday, but everyone's pretty certain we can get an extension in light of today's events. Besides, if I had stayed any longer in that building, I probably would've gotten embarrassingly sick.
I left the building with a coworker, Michael. We knew the trains wouldn't be running for at least a few hours, so we found a bus to take us to Kawasaki station, from which we could catch another bus to Yokohama station, and from there figure out the rest of our way home. He lives west of Yokohama, so he had a longer way to go than me, but we decided to accompany each other on our sure-to-be-difficult journey home.
We caught a bus not long after leaving the office. It trundled along towards its destination at a pretty normal pace, surprisingly, until we hit a major highway (#1, I think it was, which would become our friend for the next few hours). The bus was stopped dead about 10 minutes away from its destination, so the bus driver let off anyone who wanted to walk the rest of the way. Michael and I decided to walk it.
The directions from the bus driver weren't too clear, so we stopped in a convenience store to look at a map. Thanks to Michael's superior map-reading skills, we figured out the way to Kawasaki Station and were able to get there pretty quickly. Unfortunately, when we got there, there were some serious lines for the buses, none of which were even at the station at the time. We first had to find out which bus would be best for us, which involved going to all three bus stop areas around the station and checking their route maps. Only one bus went in the right direction. It was past 7:30 PM at that point, and we hadn't eaten dinner, so we decided to get dinner before braving the bus.
That was a bit of an adventure. My phone battery was on its last legs, too. Just after we decided on the bus, I got an email from tsunderella telling me that the trains were down for the day. At that point, my phone decided to cheerfully tell me that it would shut down due to zero battery power. Great. On our quest for dinner, we found a cell phone store where I attempted to charge my phone. Unfortunately, quite a few other people had that notion, so there were no available courtesy chargers when we got there, and that store was almost closing. We gave up on that idea and decided on getting food.
We had passed by a few Chinese places on our way to Kawasaki Station, so we went back there to check them out. We went to three, and each one told us that it would take at least 30 minutes for them to get us our food. Since Chinese restaurants in Japan are dens of thieves tobacco, we decided we'd rather wait 30 minutes in a smoke-free establishment. We somehow found one, a ramen place called Ramen Kagetsu Arashi (らあめん花月嵐). It was a name familiar to both of us, since there were franchises near our homes. We went in and ended up waiting 30 minutes for delicious, warm food without needing to secondhand smoke our way to Cancerville in the process. At that point, Michael allowed me to use my phone to try to send a short message to tsunderella. His phone was also low on battery, so he had to shut it off while we ate, but I am still very grateful to him for letting me use his phone.
Bellies full, we returned to bus station to find the longest lines for buses ever in the existence of infinityinfinity. Judging from the lack of actual buses at the bus top and the length of the line (we couldn't even find the end!), we figured it probably would've been hours to wait to get on a bus that would just get stuck in hours of deadlocked traffic. It came down to waiting in the increasing cold, or try to walk to Yokohama Station on our own. The highway had signs pointing the way, and it looked like many other people had chosen that path. We decided to walk.
We went back to good ol' Highway #1. The first sign we saw indicated that Yokohama was 13 kilometers (about 8 miles) away from our current position in Kawasaki. Two hours' walk? Better than two hours' wait for a crowded bus that wouldn't move as quickly as our feet. About an hour into our walk, we crossed the border into Yokohama City, the Tsurumi River. A few minutes after that, our feet started whining at us, so we stopped in a convenience store to re-energize. Michael decided to check his phone to see if he got any emails back, and at that point I remembered that tsunderella had set a mail filter to block some spam that had been pestering her inbox. I'm guessing my short message never got to her. Bummer.
At that point, we were about halfway to our destination. We pressed on, and nothing really interesting happened until we got closer to Yokohama. Just lots of walking past slower walkers, lots of even slower cars in the highway to our right, and deepening cold. The walking kept us rather comfortably warm, all things told. I never felt cold, anyway.
Anyway, we neared Yokohama Station from the east side. As we got closer, I recognized the area as the place where tsunderella and I went to hang out with friends, including starkodama, in a bar a couple weeks earlier. We passed by the street where Good Spirits Steady was, which was a great relief to me. It meant that Yokohama Station was only five minutes away! We pressed on, spirits raised.
When we got to the station, we heard some encouraging news: the subways were running! We rushed as quickly as our tired feet could take us to the subway gates. A crowd was stopped outside the gates, as there was another crowd already on the train platform, so the security and police stopped more people from overcrowding the train platform. Good idea. We don't want anyone getting injured by a fast-moving train on a day like this. So, we waited patiently for the train to arrive and the crowds to clear. It was about 11:20 PM at this point.
Surprisingly, the wait wasn't as long as we expected. In just over half an hour, we managed to crowd onto a train heading the way we needed. And let me tell you, that was definitely the most crowded train I've ever ridden on in my life. It wasn't bad, though, since we had traveled long through the cold night. It was kind of nice being in a warm place. A tall business man next to me wearing a clean, black coat made a comfortable pillow. It took probably a little over 30 minutes for the train to arrive at the station that was nearest my home on that line, Totsuka.
Totsuka Station was a veritable ghost town, but there were some officials standing around to help guide weary travelers. I jogged cheerfully (I must've been wired from the journey) to the taxi stand at the station. My heart sank when I found another long line waiting for the taxis that weren't there. Since Totsuka was next to the station I live at, I decided I could walk the final distance. So close!
I found the train tracks easily, and I knew that if I followed them, I could get home. I first asked a helpful young man working the emergency night shift (to confirm that the rails would be safe to use tomorrow) if I was going in the right direction, and he said yes. With a smile and a farewell, I set off on the final hour of my long night.
The area I was in was a bit removed from the big city, so the streets weren't very well lit. I had no other choice though, so I pressed on. My feet were, at that point, begging and pleading me to stop. I had walked about 20 minutes until I noticed an empty taxi coming my way. I waved at it... and it continued going without stopping. Sigh. I pressed on.
Luckily, yet another taxi appeared in the distance. I waved even more frantically this time... and it kept going. I kept walking. But then, I heard its breaks squeak lightly. I turned around to see the taxi waiting for me. Not missing a chance to rest my legs and get home already, I dashed to the taxi and got in. Thanking the driver profusely for stopping, I told him to take me home.
He was a very nice man, probably in his early fifties. It turned out that he had just started taxi driving about a week ago, too. He was very friendly, and we chatted a bit about the earthquake and how crazy the transportation became. I told him briefly about my journey from Kawasaki to Yokohama, and he seemed genuinely surprised and sympathetic. I'm glad I got his taxi, because it was another 10 minutes by car to get to my apartment. I have no idea how much walking that would've been.
I rushed up the stairs to my apartment, hoping the damage wasn't too bad. I had heard from starkodama that there was no electricity in the neighborhood, but luckily it had been restored when I got home. When I got to my kitchen, nothing had fallen over or broken. Thank goodness! I went to my bedroom to check on my computer. All accounted for and in one piece. Phew!
I plugged in my phone and turned it on as soon as I could. I found an email from the fiancée saying that she found refuge in an all-night Internet cafe, which was a relief. It kinda sucks that we can't be together tonight, though :/
I left my office at 5:20 PM, and I got home at 1:20 AM. These were the most exciting eight hours of my life. I hope for a much less interesting life from now on.
I was in my 7th floor office building in Kawasaki when the earthquake struck at 2:46 PM local time. The shaking started gradually at first, and it reminded me of another, smaller earthquake that occurred just a couple days ago. The shaking normally leveled off at just-uncomfortable level, but this time it kept growing. There are large cabinets behind me that are set on rails so that they can slide left and right, and they started crashing into each other. The shaking just got more intense. This is gonna be uncomfortable, I thought to myself. That was only the beginning.
About a month prior, we held an emergency drill. I then did something I never thought I'd ever have to do seriously: I donned my United-Nations-blue safety helmet and crawled under my desk. My heart pounded about as wildly as the shaking. I pulled out my smartphone to email tsunderella to see if she was safe, but the cell phone networks were of course experiencing heavy traffic, so it took a few tries to get an email through.
The shaking must've lasted well over a minute. It finally subsided enough for me to get up from under my desk. When I peeked out again, I could see most of my other coworkers also wearing their helmets. An announcement came on telling us that an earthquake had occured (duh) and to await further instruction. We tried to get back to work, since nothing fell down and no one seemed hurt.
Then, the first aftershock came. It was nearly as big as the actual earthquake, so we got under our desks again, frantically emailing friends and loved ones. I also took the opportunity to check my earthquake information app I had downloaded just days prior when the last earthquake hit. It reported the quake was magnitude 7.9 at that point, which was the worst I'd ever seen in my time here. At this point, I noticed my smartphone battery was down to 40%. Not a good sign.
We evacuated the building after the aftershock settled down. Other smaller aftershocks continued, making me seasick (buildingsick?) a little. Once we filed down the stairs and out into the grassy courtyard of my office building, it started raining lightly. Great. Luckily, I brought my foldable umbrella, so it wasn't too bad for me. Even luckier, the rain stopped after a few minutes. We stayed outside for probably about an hour, and then the disaster prevention team for the building announced that it was safe to return to work. I decided to go back inside with some coworkers (many others had actually already gone home at this point), as it was getting cold out.
Incessant aftershocks greeted us when we got back to the building. I could only handle it for the last hour of the normal workday, so I decided to go home at 5:20. I had been planning on doing overtime because we are working on a huge project due Monday, but everyone's pretty certain we can get an extension in light of today's events. Besides, if I had stayed any longer in that building, I probably would've gotten embarrassingly sick.
I left the building with a coworker, Michael. We knew the trains wouldn't be running for at least a few hours, so we found a bus to take us to Kawasaki station, from which we could catch another bus to Yokohama station, and from there figure out the rest of our way home. He lives west of Yokohama, so he had a longer way to go than me, but we decided to accompany each other on our sure-to-be-difficult journey home.
We caught a bus not long after leaving the office. It trundled along towards its destination at a pretty normal pace, surprisingly, until we hit a major highway (#1, I think it was, which would become our friend for the next few hours). The bus was stopped dead about 10 minutes away from its destination, so the bus driver let off anyone who wanted to walk the rest of the way. Michael and I decided to walk it.
The directions from the bus driver weren't too clear, so we stopped in a convenience store to look at a map. Thanks to Michael's superior map-reading skills, we figured out the way to Kawasaki Station and were able to get there pretty quickly. Unfortunately, when we got there, there were some serious lines for the buses, none of which were even at the station at the time. We first had to find out which bus would be best for us, which involved going to all three bus stop areas around the station and checking their route maps. Only one bus went in the right direction. It was past 7:30 PM at that point, and we hadn't eaten dinner, so we decided to get dinner before braving the bus.
That was a bit of an adventure. My phone battery was on its last legs, too. Just after we decided on the bus, I got an email from tsunderella telling me that the trains were down for the day. At that point, my phone decided to cheerfully tell me that it would shut down due to zero battery power. Great. On our quest for dinner, we found a cell phone store where I attempted to charge my phone. Unfortunately, quite a few other people had that notion, so there were no available courtesy chargers when we got there, and that store was almost closing. We gave up on that idea and decided on getting food.
We had passed by a few Chinese places on our way to Kawasaki Station, so we went back there to check them out. We went to three, and each one told us that it would take at least 30 minutes for them to get us our food. Since Chinese restaurants in Japan are dens of thieves tobacco, we decided we'd rather wait 30 minutes in a smoke-free establishment. We somehow found one, a ramen place called Ramen Kagetsu Arashi (らあめん花月嵐). It was a name familiar to both of us, since there were franchises near our homes. We went in and ended up waiting 30 minutes for delicious, warm food without needing to secondhand smoke our way to Cancerville in the process. At that point, Michael allowed me to use my phone to try to send a short message to tsunderella. His phone was also low on battery, so he had to shut it off while we ate, but I am still very grateful to him for letting me use his phone.
Bellies full, we returned to bus station to find the longest lines for buses ever in the existence of infinityinfinity. Judging from the lack of actual buses at the bus top and the length of the line (we couldn't even find the end!), we figured it probably would've been hours to wait to get on a bus that would just get stuck in hours of deadlocked traffic. It came down to waiting in the increasing cold, or try to walk to Yokohama Station on our own. The highway had signs pointing the way, and it looked like many other people had chosen that path. We decided to walk.
We went back to good ol' Highway #1. The first sign we saw indicated that Yokohama was 13 kilometers (about 8 miles) away from our current position in Kawasaki. Two hours' walk? Better than two hours' wait for a crowded bus that wouldn't move as quickly as our feet. About an hour into our walk, we crossed the border into Yokohama City, the Tsurumi River. A few minutes after that, our feet started whining at us, so we stopped in a convenience store to re-energize. Michael decided to check his phone to see if he got any emails back, and at that point I remembered that tsunderella had set a mail filter to block some spam that had been pestering her inbox. I'm guessing my short message never got to her. Bummer.
At that point, we were about halfway to our destination. We pressed on, and nothing really interesting happened until we got closer to Yokohama. Just lots of walking past slower walkers, lots of even slower cars in the highway to our right, and deepening cold. The walking kept us rather comfortably warm, all things told. I never felt cold, anyway.
Anyway, we neared Yokohama Station from the east side. As we got closer, I recognized the area as the place where tsunderella and I went to hang out with friends, including starkodama, in a bar a couple weeks earlier. We passed by the street where Good Spirits Steady was, which was a great relief to me. It meant that Yokohama Station was only five minutes away! We pressed on, spirits raised.
When we got to the station, we heard some encouraging news: the subways were running! We rushed as quickly as our tired feet could take us to the subway gates. A crowd was stopped outside the gates, as there was another crowd already on the train platform, so the security and police stopped more people from overcrowding the train platform. Good idea. We don't want anyone getting injured by a fast-moving train on a day like this. So, we waited patiently for the train to arrive and the crowds to clear. It was about 11:20 PM at this point.
Surprisingly, the wait wasn't as long as we expected. In just over half an hour, we managed to crowd onto a train heading the way we needed. And let me tell you, that was definitely the most crowded train I've ever ridden on in my life. It wasn't bad, though, since we had traveled long through the cold night. It was kind of nice being in a warm place. A tall business man next to me wearing a clean, black coat made a comfortable pillow. It took probably a little over 30 minutes for the train to arrive at the station that was nearest my home on that line, Totsuka.
Totsuka Station was a veritable ghost town, but there were some officials standing around to help guide weary travelers. I jogged cheerfully (I must've been wired from the journey) to the taxi stand at the station. My heart sank when I found another long line waiting for the taxis that weren't there. Since Totsuka was next to the station I live at, I decided I could walk the final distance. So close!
I found the train tracks easily, and I knew that if I followed them, I could get home. I first asked a helpful young man working the emergency night shift (to confirm that the rails would be safe to use tomorrow) if I was going in the right direction, and he said yes. With a smile and a farewell, I set off on the final hour of my long night.
The area I was in was a bit removed from the big city, so the streets weren't very well lit. I had no other choice though, so I pressed on. My feet were, at that point, begging and pleading me to stop. I had walked about 20 minutes until I noticed an empty taxi coming my way. I waved at it... and it continued going without stopping. Sigh. I pressed on.
Luckily, yet another taxi appeared in the distance. I waved even more frantically this time... and it kept going. I kept walking. But then, I heard its breaks squeak lightly. I turned around to see the taxi waiting for me. Not missing a chance to rest my legs and get home already, I dashed to the taxi and got in. Thanking the driver profusely for stopping, I told him to take me home.
He was a very nice man, probably in his early fifties. It turned out that he had just started taxi driving about a week ago, too. He was very friendly, and we chatted a bit about the earthquake and how crazy the transportation became. I told him briefly about my journey from Kawasaki to Yokohama, and he seemed genuinely surprised and sympathetic. I'm glad I got his taxi, because it was another 10 minutes by car to get to my apartment. I have no idea how much walking that would've been.
I rushed up the stairs to my apartment, hoping the damage wasn't too bad. I had heard from starkodama that there was no electricity in the neighborhood, but luckily it had been restored when I got home. When I got to my kitchen, nothing had fallen over or broken. Thank goodness! I went to my bedroom to check on my computer. All accounted for and in one piece. Phew!
I plugged in my phone and turned it on as soon as I could. I found an email from the fiancée saying that she found refuge in an all-night Internet cafe, which was a relief. It kinda sucks that we can't be together tonight, though :/
I left my office at 5:20 PM, and I got home at 1:20 AM. These were the most exciting eight hours of my life. I hope for a much less interesting life from now on.