Damn...
I feel I should state how absolutely surreal things are over here.
Yesterday was a gorgeous day, as was today. It was sunny, things are warming up and spring is almost here. Really, it feels just like any other day. You'd never guess that anything was wrong.
Yet I'm sitting here watching the scenes of devastation that are being played on every single channel. It's so close to me, yet feels so far away.
I feel horribly guilty.
Because the schools were preparing for graduation, I came home early yesterday. I had plans in Sapporo, dinner and then going to see a band play at bar. A Japanese Irish(/Scottish...?) punk band, in honor for St. Patrick's Day. It promised to be an awesome night. I was very much looking forward to it.
I decided to take a quick nap before I got ready, and around 2:45 PM I woke up to a little shaking. I've lived in Japan for over two years, I'm used to the earthquakes. Usually they only last for a few seconds, but this one just kept going and got stronger and stronger. It was certainly the strongest I ever felt, and I live pretty far from the epicenter. Really, the power of the quake didn't bother me so much that it lasted for almost 2 minutes. After the shaking finally stopped, I got out of bed to check the news. The TV at first was only reporting about damages and had a tsunami warning. The internet so far said nothing except for the magnitude of the quake.
So naturally I went on Facebook to comment about the quake. A few days prior there had been another quake that I hadn't felt, even though all my other friends said they did. My parents had even e-mailed me asking about it. So I made a status update saying "OK, I felt THAT one." And then e-mailed my parents to let them know I was OK.
Friends began to make status updates and more news began hitting the internet. At first it seemed like a huge quake and a big tsunami, but nothing serious. The news only reported that there were damages and injuries. I'd like to point on that Japan is one of the most earthquake-prepared countries in the world, I naively thought there wasn't anything to worry about.
Still, after a few strong aftershocks I began to get nervous and started contacting friends in Honshu and other parts of Hokkaido that were closer to the coast. So far all my friends and loved ones were present and accounted for, so I left another reassuring message on Facebook about how I was completely fine, and went to take a shower. I came back to a few messages from friends in America asking how I was, I told them everything was cool and headed out for the night.
While heading to Sapporo, I get a message from the guy I'm supposed to meet for dinner, asking if I wanted to cancel tonight due to the quake. I told him I was fine, and if he was still up for tonight, I didn't see any reason to cancel. I'd been looking forward to this night all week, and I wasn't going to let a little shaking stop me from having a good time.
Man, I feel like an ass.
So we go out, we have a good time, the band was awesome(Japanese people in kilts! Playing bagpipes, accordions and fiddles! Amazing), I run into lots of friends and make some new ones, and things are swell. I get a message from my parents asking me to please please PLEASE get on Skype as soon as I can. I send them a message back saying that I thought we had plans to Skype were on a different day, I wasn't at home right now, and was something wrong? They just tell me they've been watching the news and are worried. I figure that they're just parents, they worry, and the news is probably making things seem worse than they actually are.
So I catch the last train back home and make it back home around 1 AM. While on the train, a friend that works at the airport messages me to say she just got off work, and the airport was crazy right now. So many people trying to get back to Honshu had to be turned away and tons of flights were canceled. It was nuts. She also mentions that people actually died in Sendei, which was the first I had heard that there were actually causalities. I guess I figured that there would be, but she tells me that the death count was somewhere in the hundreds, which truly shocked me.
I get home to 30+ messages from friends and family asking about how I am, is everything OK, am I safe, what are things like where I am right now? I try to answer them all, and then head off to bed because I still needed to go to graduation tomorrow.
Now it's a day later and I don't know what to say. Everything's....normal. Graduation was normal, I went shopping and it was normal, everything is just...proceeding as if nothing happened. Yet I'm watching the news and hearing that the death count is in the thousands and I'm watching scenes of lives completely destroyed I can't help but feel guilty that I don't have anything worse to say other than "there was a lot of shaking and it lasted for a long time and I felt nervous".
Guilty and very VERY thankful.
Yesterday was a gorgeous day, as was today. It was sunny, things are warming up and spring is almost here. Really, it feels just like any other day. You'd never guess that anything was wrong.
Yet I'm sitting here watching the scenes of devastation that are being played on every single channel. It's so close to me, yet feels so far away.
I feel horribly guilty.
Because the schools were preparing for graduation, I came home early yesterday. I had plans in Sapporo, dinner and then going to see a band play at bar. A Japanese Irish(/Scottish...?) punk band, in honor for St. Patrick's Day. It promised to be an awesome night. I was very much looking forward to it.
I decided to take a quick nap before I got ready, and around 2:45 PM I woke up to a little shaking. I've lived in Japan for over two years, I'm used to the earthquakes. Usually they only last for a few seconds, but this one just kept going and got stronger and stronger. It was certainly the strongest I ever felt, and I live pretty far from the epicenter. Really, the power of the quake didn't bother me so much that it lasted for almost 2 minutes. After the shaking finally stopped, I got out of bed to check the news. The TV at first was only reporting about damages and had a tsunami warning. The internet so far said nothing except for the magnitude of the quake.
So naturally I went on Facebook to comment about the quake. A few days prior there had been another quake that I hadn't felt, even though all my other friends said they did. My parents had even e-mailed me asking about it. So I made a status update saying "OK, I felt THAT one." And then e-mailed my parents to let them know I was OK.
Friends began to make status updates and more news began hitting the internet. At first it seemed like a huge quake and a big tsunami, but nothing serious. The news only reported that there were damages and injuries. I'd like to point on that Japan is one of the most earthquake-prepared countries in the world, I naively thought there wasn't anything to worry about.
Still, after a few strong aftershocks I began to get nervous and started contacting friends in Honshu and other parts of Hokkaido that were closer to the coast. So far all my friends and loved ones were present and accounted for, so I left another reassuring message on Facebook about how I was completely fine, and went to take a shower. I came back to a few messages from friends in America asking how I was, I told them everything was cool and headed out for the night.
While heading to Sapporo, I get a message from the guy I'm supposed to meet for dinner, asking if I wanted to cancel tonight due to the quake. I told him I was fine, and if he was still up for tonight, I didn't see any reason to cancel. I'd been looking forward to this night all week, and I wasn't going to let a little shaking stop me from having a good time.
Man, I feel like an ass.
So we go out, we have a good time, the band was awesome(Japanese people in kilts! Playing bagpipes, accordions and fiddles! Amazing), I run into lots of friends and make some new ones, and things are swell. I get a message from my parents asking me to please please PLEASE get on Skype as soon as I can. I send them a message back saying that I thought we had plans to Skype were on a different day, I wasn't at home right now, and was something wrong? They just tell me they've been watching the news and are worried. I figure that they're just parents, they worry, and the news is probably making things seem worse than they actually are.
So I catch the last train back home and make it back home around 1 AM. While on the train, a friend that works at the airport messages me to say she just got off work, and the airport was crazy right now. So many people trying to get back to Honshu had to be turned away and tons of flights were canceled. It was nuts. She also mentions that people actually died in Sendei, which was the first I had heard that there were actually causalities. I guess I figured that there would be, but she tells me that the death count was somewhere in the hundreds, which truly shocked me.
I get home to 30+ messages from friends and family asking about how I am, is everything OK, am I safe, what are things like where I am right now? I try to answer them all, and then head off to bed because I still needed to go to graduation tomorrow.
Now it's a day later and I don't know what to say. Everything's....normal. Graduation was normal, I went shopping and it was normal, everything is just...proceeding as if nothing happened. Yet I'm watching the news and hearing that the death count is in the thousands and I'm watching scenes of lives completely destroyed I can't help but feel guilty that I don't have anything worse to say other than "there was a lot of shaking and it lasted for a long time and I felt nervous".
Guilty and very VERY thankful.