With it already reaching a full year...
With it already reaching a full year, I figured I should probably get some thoughts down about everything. I apologize, because this is going to be considerably lengthy.
Come March 11th, 2011, I’d been living in Japan for about 5 months. As it usually is with Japan, there were earthquakes every now and then but I only ever felt one fairly tiny one, about a few weeks after arriving. Rei, my roommate at the time, was lying in bed while I was on the computer. It was so brief, so sudden and so light, we looked at each other and weren’t really sure if we had just felt our first quake or not. We compared what we thought we felt, giggled about it being our first, and then moved on. Between then and March 11th, I didn’t feel anything else.
I was always kind of peeved when I saw people post on fb or twitter that it had been shaking, and that I had missed it. For myself, growing up in an area where quakes don’t hit, I thought I’d feel every little shift in the earth’s surface. Most of the time though, I was either walking or on the train/subway when they’d hit, so I didn’t feel a thing. I remember walking to Donki with Emma one day when she and I got mails about a pretty strong one that neither of us even noticed. It seemed it was then that I figured I’d have to be sitting down to even feel one. But come March 11th, and the weeks afterwards, I cursed myself for ever having been irked by not feeling a quake.
I was in class at 2:46pm, that Friday. We were sitting in our desk alignment of a U around the teacher, instead of rows, and we were doing some conjugation exercises when one of the Korean girls close to me quietly said “ah, yureteru” (Its shaking) I hear her and try to sit even stiller, focusing to see if I could feel it. The teacher also heard and said “sou desu ne, yureteiru” It was very slow, almost not even there, and the entire class stopped talking as we all focused on it, waiting for it to pass.
It didn’t.
Instead, it got stronger. Just a little bit at first. Just strong enough to rock you in your seat if you were fully relaxed. Our teacher took that time to teach us the earthquake procedure of making sure the windows and doors are opened, in case of a need for an evacuation route, and of getting down and ducking under your desk, making sure to cover your head. So there we were, on the floor under our desks. I was crouched down on my knees. The rocking had already continued for much longer than any other quake. I guess that’s another reason as to why I would miss them all the time. They’d end as quickly as they’d start. But not this one. This one was sticking around, and it hadn’t reached its peak yet. Once again it got stronger, and stronger and finally it peaked. Even though I was on my knees, my center of gravity fairly low and steady, I fell to the side, onto my hips. I reached out to grasp my classmate’s hand next to me as I shut my eyes, my heart beating quickly, and the screams from not only my classroom, but of the entire building reached my ears, though they were barely audible above my own.
When the ground below you moves due to a quake, it’s not just a side to side motion. It also moves front and back, up and down, as well as in some disgusting L and S patterns. It’s disorienting.
This quake didn’t end quickly. It followed the same painstaking decrease in force as for when it was building up. The TV hanging in the corner of my classroom shook so violently and so hard, I was afraid it would fly off the wall. Once it was a mere fraction of its worst, we crawled out from underneath our desks and looked around at each other. What felt like an eternity, turned out to be a full 3 minutes.
Normally, we’d take our break at 3pm, but instead the teachers had us stay in the rooms as they surveyed the building for any damage. Our teacher came back in and barely a half hour since the big one, we were rocking again. The aftershocks had started. Once again we were under the desks, this time I was able to not scream ^^; and I kept my eyes open. I watched the buildings outside the window sway; the desks and chairs bump and try to slide across the room. This one was fairly long as well, and almost as strong as the initial quake. We were a bit more wary about coming out from under our desks this time.
The office staff got on the intercom and announced in as many languages as they could translate, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English- that class was cancelled for the rest of the day. That anyone that lived within walking distance from the school was free to go home once they felt safe enough to, but that anyone further away would have to wait due to the halt in train and subway service. I lived a little bit over an hour away by train- not at all within walking distance. Many of my friends also lived far away, so once the school staff were able to get all the American/English speaking students together with their English speaking rep, all the Korean students with their rep, etc, those of us who had keitai, found out we couldn’t call out. The phone lines were jammed with too many people trying to get in contact with others. I jumped on my ipod, and using the school’s wifi, updated fb and twitter to let everyone know I was okay.
While we were all waiting and still nervously giggling, I started seeing tweets about tsunami warnings. Also about the fire in Chiba. I relayed the information to the people in the room, but initially we shrugged it off. Later, some of my friends had gone outside for some air and when they came back, they told me there were a lot of people in the street watching a TV across the way from us, and that a giant tsunami had hit Sendai and surrounding cities up north. I must have been in so much shock because it didn’t register at first. I stayed in the room, reading everything on twitter, answering as many messages from my friends abroad as possible, bracing for every strong aftershock that hit. I didn’t go to watch the news broadcast.
We all eventually decided to find something to eat, since it was very likely we wouldn’t be getting home any time soon. There were a lot of people in the street. Nothing crazy disorganized like looting as it would have been here in the US, but there were definitely more people walking in the street than I had seen there before. It was due to all the trains. If people wanted to get home, they could only rely on their 2 feet.
We ended up eating at Subway. Once back at school, we saw teachers were setting up big teacher-chaperoned walking groups for places like Ikebukuro, which were farther away to walk to, but since the school had a dorm there, they knew a lot of people stayed there. Several students left with those groups and the amount of ‘stranded’ individuals shrank.
Sarah and I were stuck in Shunjuku Gyoenmae for as long as the trains didn’t run. We both lived over an hour away. After our ipods and keitai started running out of battery, and we saw tweets about stores like BIC CAMERA giving out batteries/chargers, we decided to try our luck. Even though we still couldn’t call out, we wanted to be able to call our relatives overseas as soon as the lines opened back up.
Walking to Shinjuku proper took longer than usual. The sidewalks were even more crowded than when we went to eat. The good thing though, was that the flow of traffic was steady moving. People had split up sidewalk by walking direction. When we eventually made it to BIC CAMERA, the crowds of people trying to get their hands on the last few batteries and chargers kind of overwhelmed me. We didn’t end up getting anything, since the stuff we needed was sold out. We walked a bit to clear our heads, bought ourselves some crepes to snack on and just huddled together for warmth. The tsunamis that hit Chiba and Tokyo Disney Land had brought some freezing cold weather. It blew my mind though, that exactly a week prior, we had been on our school sponsored Tokyo Disney Land outing. We missed being stranded even further away and we missed being that close to a tsunami by exactly a week.
On our way back to school, we passed by a place that had multiple TVs tuned in to different news channels. All they were playing was a loop of assorted video clips from the tsunamis hitting. That was my first time seeing the footage. I moved to the side in order to not block the people that were walking and stopped. Stopped and stared, and finally took it all in. My chest tightened up something mighty and I could actually feel my body start to hyperventilate. Sarah helped me calm down, but that moment was when the initial shock finally wore off and I was thoroughly scared. No more giggling, no more of me being convinced that the reports on twitter were fake. Reality had sunken in and my skin had turned cold.
We continued walking back to school when my breathing had returned to normal and we settled in for the night. Sarah went upstairs to the top floor of the building to sleep, I couldn’t and refused to be so up high with the frequent onslaught of new aftershocks, so I stayed in the first floor computer lab. This is how I met Tsuki. She was also there, both of us freezing up whenever we’d feel a new aftershock and taking solace in each other’s presence. We both stayed up all night, reading gakuranman’s frequent updates, and eventually, I was finally able to call out on my keitai. I left a message for both my aunt and my mother. Later on, actually talking to my mother on the phone. Afterwards, Tsuki and I hit a couple of close by convenience stores for food and basically had to eat whatever was left. The shelves had already been picked clean by other stranded people.
Finally morning came around and the trains announced they would be running again. I left the school at 8:20am. My usual route would take about an hour and 15 minutes when including the walking. It also consisted of 3 trains. The first one arrived on time and wasn’t crowded. Maybe too many people were afraid to take the subway so soon. Once in Shinjuku proper and on the Saikyo line platform though, I had to wait 45 minutes before the train actually left. Being shoved in a crowded Saikyo line train sucks, hence why we’d nickname it PSYCHO line, or even Saitei line (horrible), lol, but that day was even worse. Everyone was cranky and wanted to get home. Because the train departure times weren’t on the platform signs as usual, we all squished into the train and stayed there for the 45 minutes, unsure as to when it would start running.
Something really weird happened while waiting. Only 5 feet away from me, an older man was sitting in his seat, sleeping, when all of a sudden he tensed up, back straight, and his face turned red. It looked like he couldn’t breathe. The already crowded train of people, pushed back away from him and almost knocked me over. The man then started convulsing and slightly foaming at the mouth, which made me think he was having a seizure, and a couple of older ladies walked out of the train and started yelling for the train attendant. He stopped seizing and laid there limp until the train attendant arrived. Then the old man woke up but was still disoriented. He was helped over into a wheelchair and wheeled away. To this day, I still wonder and worry about that old man. I hope he’s okay.
Once the train started rolling, it was moving at less than half its usual speed. Every stop on the way to my transfer station felt like an eternity. Once at Akabane, I spilled out of the train and transferred to the Keihin Tohoku platform, my last train. The lines were ridiculously long. Sarah had already made it home and she mailed me a photo of the damage to her room. Things everywhere >_< Then she started mailing me about Fukushima. About the power plants. After wrapping my head around it, I called my mother and broke down to her on the phone. Silly gaijin crying on the phone in public, in the train station. I felt so silly, but 24 hours without sleep, having gone through the biggest recorded earthquake of Japan’s history, the all-nighter of aftershocks, the seizing old man, the stress from the pushing and shoving on the trains, which hurt my bad knee, and now the power plants risking a meltdown? People were going to have to deal.
I finally got to my home station at noon, a total travel time of 4 hours, and limped home. The last bit of pushing and shoving on the Keihin-Tohoku line finished screwing up my bad knee for the day so the 15 minute walk home SUCKED. I grabbed a few things to eat at the combini and then met up with my guesthouse mates. The majority of them were sitting in the dining room, with the TV tuned in to a news channel. At that point though, all channels were news channels. They were talking about Fukushima and the tsunamis and Mai-san, who’s father lived in the area, was worried sick so we tried our best to comfort her.
Once I got to my room that I shared with my roommate at the time, Hisami, I saw all my things spilled on my desk and desk chair. Once Hisami got back home, she told me my spaghetti container had spilled over too and it was all over the floor, but she cleaned it up. Thankfully none of my stuff was broken so I quickly organized and got in bed to sleep.
The stress from everything happening ruined my already fragile living arrangement with Hisami since we started fighting about me being up all night, working to convince every single person emailing me to come home due to the power plants, telling them that I wasn’t going to and that I’d be fine. She thought I was just screwing around and wasting electricity; that I should have been considerate of everyone in Japan’s feelings as to what happened. I was. But I think she pushed me out of her ‘circle’ too quickly because she thought, since I wasn’t Japanese, I couldn’t have understood what everyone was feeling. But I did. Japan, at that time and still today, feels like my home. I’d been living there for almost 6 months and I wasn’t going to give up and run away just because of what was happening. But because of my family and friends were worried and with the time difference, I was having to stay up to convince them. For their sake, not mine.
I ended up moving out and into a single room the same day. I couldn’t stand her judgmental stares and she didn’t want to hear my reasoning. I’m still kind of hurt about having been pushed away like that, as if I didn’t understand the pain and suffering, as if I was okay regardless of everything, because I was a gaijin.
But I guess that can’t be helped.
Over the next few days and weeks, the majority of the friends I had made left. Due to family pressure, or fear for themselves, some went home to their country, some went to vacation in Korea for a break from all the aftershocks, and some went down south. I didn’t get to say goodbye to a lot of them, and it affected me deeply. I hid out in my room, slept a ridiculous amount of hours, drank by myself, couldn’t concentrate in school, which thankfully became voluntary since the rolling blackouts made taking the trains so much more difficult and the population of students left in the school was miniscule. I couldn’t bring myself to go after a few days attending classes. I hated seeing that every day, my class shrank more and more as people left. The lectures felt like they weren’t important anymore. I wanted to stay in Japan longer, but not for school. I wanted to go volunteer in Sendai, especially after Tom-san and Lilie-san left the guesthouse to go help. But with my visa and the rules of KCP since they sponsored my visa, wouldn’t let me.
I also had 4 BORN lives left after the earthquake but they were all canceled. I got my money back, but I didn’t get to have my final ‘give-it-my-all’ live, until they came back to the US for Nekocon *lame me*
The aftershocks kept coming, kept waking me up. I kept feeling ones and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining them or if they were really there anymore. I felt so alone but I still didn’t want to leave Japan. Towards the end of my trip, my original return date having always been April 6th, I was able to come out of the haze long enough to enjoy myself with the very few people that were left. They took me out and also threw me an amazing farewell party, and I’m forever grateful that we were able to push aside the pain the earthquake that screwed up our routine caused.
Tying this long as hell entry up, even in coming back to the US, I still imagine earthquakes from time-to-time. I still dream about them and wake up scared half to deathl. I still wish I could have stayed longer, gone up north to help, but it wasn’t meant to happen. So I’ll continue working towards my goal of finishing school and going back as an English teacher, all while never forgetting the tragic day that snuck up on us out of nowhere, and threw us all for a loop.
I hope Japan continues progressing forward and I hope the people up north are able to go back to their normal routine again soon. がんばろう日本
日本だから、信じてるよ。