Aftershock
Sorry I haven't updated in such a long time. Things have been crazy these past few months. I hope things settle soon so I can write more in here.
I'm picking up right where the last entry left off.
The problem with earthquakes of catastrophic proportions is that you, in that situation, have absolutely no idea when it's going to end.
History can always neatly wrap things up by telling you "First this happened, and then this happened, and then it ended." Reality is much more chaotic. Most people living in the moments of disasters know about as much as you would if you were thrown into that situation.
Now, looking back, I know that the worst (for a while anyway) was over. But the me of that time had no idea that was the case. No idea whatsoever.
So I crouched underneath my bed in that little storage space for a while, wondering. Would another one hit? Was the worst over? Would my building collapse? Should I leave my building? Was the outside a disaster? What'd even happened?
The first thing I'd done when I went out from my little hole the first time was to grab my cell phone. I tried to call my good friend who's Japanese, and who lives in Tokyo. She would know what was going on.
And it would've been great to have been able to call her. But the phone gave me a message I'd never seen before: "Please try again later." I tried to text anyone and everyone, and I got the same message.
What the hell would I have done if I was trapped under something? Everyone thinks that if you've got your cell phone then you'll be all right, but when you get a message like "Please try again later" then the phone is nothing but a paperweight and a watch. You're as good as alone. People all over Japan were probably getting that message on their phones, which popped up mere minutes after the earthquake had struck.
Eventually I decided to emerge from my hole when I heard announcements being read over the speakers rigged up around town. Every town in Japan has this, I think. Due to the echoes it was hard for me to figure out what they were saying.
My room was in complete disarray. Every book I'd put on my shelves was now on the floor; my TV had leapt off the table and fallen on its screen on the floor; my plant had crashed to the ground, spilling soil everywhere. It looked like...like a disaster had hit my room.
I picked my way through the rubble to the other side of the room and looked outside to see what the damage looked like.
No damage. None that I could see. I watched as people ran out of their homes and started to congregate to share information. That seems to be a basic human emotion. In times of danger you need the confirmation from someone else that it'd happened, and you hope to find someone who can give you answers regarding the danger. Humans like to learn about what frightens us. You can see this displayed perfectly at times when you say "What was that? Did you hear something?" Not: "I don't care what that noise is." We seem to unconsciously desire knowledge, especially when we're terrified.
I went outside and noticed that nothing looked out of the ordinary. Only my room looked like an earthquake had hit it. I saw a girl about my age on the street, and I asked her what was going on. She said she didn't know, that it was really scary what'd just happened, and the announcements were for parents to get to the elementary schools and pick up their children immediately.
After talking to her, and seeing how no one was running around freaking out, I decided that panicking would be seen as lame to these people. Like a child throwing a tantrum. So even though I wanted to freak out, I didn't. I think that's also a human thing. Like when you are exposed to something you have no idea about, and you're panicked. Then you see everyone around you acting normally about it, and you panic less. It happens a lot when you're in another culture. People acting normally while doing what you think to be absolutely absurd things. You just accept it because they do.
So I went back into my apartment, wondering if I should clean up. Then another major earthquake hit. Not as strong as the first, but enough to make me realize that maybe I should postpone cleanup.
The miraculous thing was that my computer was still functioning. After an assortment of books had fallen on it from the shelves overhead, the screen looked fried. But I restarted it, and everything worked perfectly. A miracle.
The Internet was still up and running, too. I went to the BBC and saw they were already covering the story. So I ended up watching BBC's live broadcast online while I kept furiously trying to connect to someone using my cell phone. I turned on my radio to listen to the Japanese version of events as well.
Without moving my TV from its spot, I righted it so that I could see the screen. I had expected it to be shattered, but it was fine. It even turned on.
So I had BBC going on my computer, the radio on, and the TV on. I alternated between the three.
The news anchors on TV all looked ruffled, and all were wearing hardhats on the air that made me laugh for the first time since the disaster had struck. They looked ridiculous.
For the rest of the day I struggled to get in contact with people to find out if they were all right, and watched the news religiously to try and find out what had happened.
Skype, it turned out, worked just fine. I called my mom, who started chatting away about something the dog had just done. Then she asked how I was.
"Oh, I'm alive," I said.
She thought I was being overly-emotional about some problem in my life. I told her to turn on the news. My poor mom proceeded to have a heart attack.
My friends in Japan were all fine, it turned out. I didn't know anyone who died, but watching the news was terrifying. No one could really report on anything since no one really knew anything. Not if another one would hit, not if a tsunami would hit again. It was all just chaos.
That night I couldn't figure out where to sleep. I was afraid to sleep. What if an earthquake struck and I somehow slept through it? I could die in my sleep. You're so helpless when you sleep. I decided to put my futon on the floor (it's on a raised platform thingy) against a wall, and facing my TV. I slept with the TV on, hoping that they'd start shouting if there was news of another earthquake.
It took me a while to get to sleep that night. There were a series of earthquakes, and there had been all day long. I had no idea if any of them could be the next big one or not. Would this particular earthquake remain insignificant, or would it continue and build up strength?
The big earthquake I experienced, I never ever want to experience that again. Ever. I know people who want to experience earthquakes and I was one of them. But big earthquakes are not an experience you want under your belt. It truly shakes you to your core and unnerves you.
The next day I went to the grocery store near my house. Everyone in the store tried to act normal, but things were off. No music played, the lights were mostly off. There were lines that almost reached the back of the store, and the shelves were almost barren of everything except alcohol, surprisingly.
But they were quiet lines. No pushing and shoving, no yelling for the cashiers to hurry it along. No one said a word.
And the ground rumbled. I watched the signs hanging overhead swing like there was a strong breeze. It felt like being underneath a roller coaster, waiting in line to board it. It felt exactly like that.
The only indication I even received that the Japanese around me might be frightened was when a particularly nasty aftershock hit. A mother waiting in line a few people ahead of me instinctively grabbed the shoulder of her daughter, waiting in line beside her. Her other hand went to her heart. Yes, the Japanese were really frightened. They just didn't want that to affect those around them.
This seems to be a mentality for the Japanese that has its upsides and downsides. The upside is in cases of disaster. They don't panic apparently. It's not good for society as a whole to panic, and would be seen as unsightly I suppose. The downside is that those who step outside what has been deemed normal for society are forever outcasts. Freedom of expression is a lost art here.
In the days that followed, there were so many earthquakes that I got dizzy every time I stood up. I had to put my bottle of perfume near my computer so that if I felt like I was moving, I could check the perfume in the glass bottle. If the liquid sloshed from side to side then it was an earthquake. If not, it was just me feeling dizzy. That was my only indication.
I still have that perfume bottle to my left, as I write this, because aftershocks are still happening here after four months have passed. There was a pretty nasty one just last night. And the geologists of Japan are predicting another massive one is due to strike at some point.
In terms of radiation, no one knows anything it seems. The Japanese government keeps bickering about clean-up in the north, and people in Tokyo and east of Tokyo are all banding together to deal with a cut-back on electricity. The government has imposed a new dress code called "Cool business" (shortened to "cool biz"). It doesn't seem like much of a difference to my eyes. Instead of ties, a Japanese businessman can now go without a tie and even unbutton the top two buttons of his dress shirt. Hooray.
I'm picking up right where the last entry left off.
The problem with earthquakes of catastrophic proportions is that you, in that situation, have absolutely no idea when it's going to end.
History can always neatly wrap things up by telling you "First this happened, and then this happened, and then it ended." Reality is much more chaotic. Most people living in the moments of disasters know about as much as you would if you were thrown into that situation.
Now, looking back, I know that the worst (for a while anyway) was over. But the me of that time had no idea that was the case. No idea whatsoever.
So I crouched underneath my bed in that little storage space for a while, wondering. Would another one hit? Was the worst over? Would my building collapse? Should I leave my building? Was the outside a disaster? What'd even happened?
The first thing I'd done when I went out from my little hole the first time was to grab my cell phone. I tried to call my good friend who's Japanese, and who lives in Tokyo. She would know what was going on.
And it would've been great to have been able to call her. But the phone gave me a message I'd never seen before: "Please try again later." I tried to text anyone and everyone, and I got the same message.
What the hell would I have done if I was trapped under something? Everyone thinks that if you've got your cell phone then you'll be all right, but when you get a message like "Please try again later" then the phone is nothing but a paperweight and a watch. You're as good as alone. People all over Japan were probably getting that message on their phones, which popped up mere minutes after the earthquake had struck.
Eventually I decided to emerge from my hole when I heard announcements being read over the speakers rigged up around town. Every town in Japan has this, I think. Due to the echoes it was hard for me to figure out what they were saying.
My room was in complete disarray. Every book I'd put on my shelves was now on the floor; my TV had leapt off the table and fallen on its screen on the floor; my plant had crashed to the ground, spilling soil everywhere. It looked like...like a disaster had hit my room.
I picked my way through the rubble to the other side of the room and looked outside to see what the damage looked like.
No damage. None that I could see. I watched as people ran out of their homes and started to congregate to share information. That seems to be a basic human emotion. In times of danger you need the confirmation from someone else that it'd happened, and you hope to find someone who can give you answers regarding the danger. Humans like to learn about what frightens us. You can see this displayed perfectly at times when you say "What was that? Did you hear something?" Not: "I don't care what that noise is." We seem to unconsciously desire knowledge, especially when we're terrified.
I went outside and noticed that nothing looked out of the ordinary. Only my room looked like an earthquake had hit it. I saw a girl about my age on the street, and I asked her what was going on. She said she didn't know, that it was really scary what'd just happened, and the announcements were for parents to get to the elementary schools and pick up their children immediately.
After talking to her, and seeing how no one was running around freaking out, I decided that panicking would be seen as lame to these people. Like a child throwing a tantrum. So even though I wanted to freak out, I didn't. I think that's also a human thing. Like when you are exposed to something you have no idea about, and you're panicked. Then you see everyone around you acting normally about it, and you panic less. It happens a lot when you're in another culture. People acting normally while doing what you think to be absolutely absurd things. You just accept it because they do.
So I went back into my apartment, wondering if I should clean up. Then another major earthquake hit. Not as strong as the first, but enough to make me realize that maybe I should postpone cleanup.
The miraculous thing was that my computer was still functioning. After an assortment of books had fallen on it from the shelves overhead, the screen looked fried. But I restarted it, and everything worked perfectly. A miracle.
The Internet was still up and running, too. I went to the BBC and saw they were already covering the story. So I ended up watching BBC's live broadcast online while I kept furiously trying to connect to someone using my cell phone. I turned on my radio to listen to the Japanese version of events as well.
Without moving my TV from its spot, I righted it so that I could see the screen. I had expected it to be shattered, but it was fine. It even turned on.
So I had BBC going on my computer, the radio on, and the TV on. I alternated between the three.
The news anchors on TV all looked ruffled, and all were wearing hardhats on the air that made me laugh for the first time since the disaster had struck. They looked ridiculous.
For the rest of the day I struggled to get in contact with people to find out if they were all right, and watched the news religiously to try and find out what had happened.
Skype, it turned out, worked just fine. I called my mom, who started chatting away about something the dog had just done. Then she asked how I was.
"Oh, I'm alive," I said.
She thought I was being overly-emotional about some problem in my life. I told her to turn on the news. My poor mom proceeded to have a heart attack.
My friends in Japan were all fine, it turned out. I didn't know anyone who died, but watching the news was terrifying. No one could really report on anything since no one really knew anything. Not if another one would hit, not if a tsunami would hit again. It was all just chaos.
That night I couldn't figure out where to sleep. I was afraid to sleep. What if an earthquake struck and I somehow slept through it? I could die in my sleep. You're so helpless when you sleep. I decided to put my futon on the floor (it's on a raised platform thingy) against a wall, and facing my TV. I slept with the TV on, hoping that they'd start shouting if there was news of another earthquake.
It took me a while to get to sleep that night. There were a series of earthquakes, and there had been all day long. I had no idea if any of them could be the next big one or not. Would this particular earthquake remain insignificant, or would it continue and build up strength?
The big earthquake I experienced, I never ever want to experience that again. Ever. I know people who want to experience earthquakes and I was one of them. But big earthquakes are not an experience you want under your belt. It truly shakes you to your core and unnerves you.
The next day I went to the grocery store near my house. Everyone in the store tried to act normal, but things were off. No music played, the lights were mostly off. There were lines that almost reached the back of the store, and the shelves were almost barren of everything except alcohol, surprisingly.
But they were quiet lines. No pushing and shoving, no yelling for the cashiers to hurry it along. No one said a word.
And the ground rumbled. I watched the signs hanging overhead swing like there was a strong breeze. It felt like being underneath a roller coaster, waiting in line to board it. It felt exactly like that.
The only indication I even received that the Japanese around me might be frightened was when a particularly nasty aftershock hit. A mother waiting in line a few people ahead of me instinctively grabbed the shoulder of her daughter, waiting in line beside her. Her other hand went to her heart. Yes, the Japanese were really frightened. They just didn't want that to affect those around them.
This seems to be a mentality for the Japanese that has its upsides and downsides. The upside is in cases of disaster. They don't panic apparently. It's not good for society as a whole to panic, and would be seen as unsightly I suppose. The downside is that those who step outside what has been deemed normal for society are forever outcasts. Freedom of expression is a lost art here.
In the days that followed, there were so many earthquakes that I got dizzy every time I stood up. I had to put my bottle of perfume near my computer so that if I felt like I was moving, I could check the perfume in the glass bottle. If the liquid sloshed from side to side then it was an earthquake. If not, it was just me feeling dizzy. That was my only indication.
I still have that perfume bottle to my left, as I write this, because aftershocks are still happening here after four months have passed. There was a pretty nasty one just last night. And the geologists of Japan are predicting another massive one is due to strike at some point.
In terms of radiation, no one knows anything it seems. The Japanese government keeps bickering about clean-up in the north, and people in Tokyo and east of Tokyo are all banding together to deal with a cut-back on electricity. The government has imposed a new dress code called "Cool business" (shortened to "cool biz"). It doesn't seem like much of a difference to my eyes. Instead of ties, a Japanese businessman can now go without a tie and even unbutton the top two buttons of his dress shirt. Hooray.