Japan, now

I don’t even know where to begin. I am completely, 100% fine, as is everyone that I know and as far as I’ve been able to tell, everyone that they know as well.

So, Friday. I had big plans for this weekend. My friend from the states was supposed to fly into Tokyo on Saturday so I was heading down to meet her. I was supposed to take a night bus from Yamagata City that didn’t leave until midnight so I was going to spend the evening with Alex rock climbing at a gym we just found, eating some dinner, enjoying spending time together before our ten days apart. So I was at work, at the Board of Education instead of at school because it’s the end of the term and all the students were either taking tests or wrapping up their school year. And I was counting down the minutes to when I could finally walk to the station and start my vacation when at 2:45 PM everyone’s cell phones started screaming, mine included. I didn’t know what was going on but I was looking around and Seiko-san said, “Earthquake,” but she was still quite calm as earthquakes really are fairly frequent in this part of the world and most of the time not too much to worry about. So then the office started shaking and the copying machine stared rolling and Seiko-san’s eyes were getting wider and wider and finally she said, “We need to get under our desks!” So everyone crouched under their desks and it just felt like it was never going to end. I am not sure how long it lasted, some reports are saying almost 2 minutes, which is really a long time for your world to be shaking and building to be swaying and your coworker’s eyes to be getting more and more round, especially when you know nothing about earthquakes and are trying to judge from their reactions just how nervous you should be…

So when it finally stopped, Aya-san said, “I have never in my life felt an earthquake this big,” and we all went downstairs into a safer room, and they counted everyone, all the employees of city hall were there and some people were crying but the mood of my coworkers seemed really detached but a little jubilant so I really still wasn’t sure how concerned I should be. Anyways, they took a head count and then we headed back upstairs. The electricity to the building was shut off but people started watching TV on their cell phones and Aya-san showed me footage of the tsunami which was just absolutely unreal. I didn’t really understand what I was seeing. My brain was just like, “Wow, that’s crazy, but it’s all farmland, right? No people are there…” even though obviously the wave was smashing through buildings left and right and you could see things bursting into flames… I was worrying about the trains, sure that they would be delayed and wondering how I would get to Yamagata City to catch my bus to meet my friend… I still thought that the trains would start running after a few hours and had no doubt that the bus would depart as scheduled.

But I found out a coworker planned to drive to YC because her infant daughter was there staying with her mother and she wanted to go be with them, so I asked her if I could catch a ride with her and we left at about 6:15. Driving there was really crazy – a lot of the traffic lights weren’t working and there was no power anywhere. It was like driving through an entirely different world. Japan is so very much defined by its lit up buildings and signs that everything felt very eerie and still. Anyways, we finally got to YC but I couldn’t direct Aya-san to Alex’s because I’ve only ever gotten there on foot and was really disoriented from being in the car and from it being completely dark outside, so I got her to the neighborhood and then got out and wandered around from there until I found it.

Once there we just huddled together for warmth and talked, he was really upset because he has a really good friend who lives in Sendai and he hadn’t been able to get ahold of her. He told me that this was the biggest earthquake that’s ever been recorded in Japan’s history and that the death toll was already over a hundred (that seemed like a huge number but now it is looking like it’s more than 10,000…) so things started to feel a lot more real and I was starting to doubt that my bus was going to be taking off at all. We walked to the station anyways, and there was no bus to be seen, at which point I started really freaking out because my friend was going to land in Tokyo, in the middle of an ever-growing disaster, not being able to speak Japanese, not knowing where to go, no one to guide her, and I had absolutely no way to get to her and no way to contact her as my cell phone was completely useless (I was able to send like two texts directly after the earthquake but about 30 minutes later my service cut out completely and stayed out for several days).

All weekend was just insane. From not having power, to finding a place to plug in Alex’s phone at the eki so that I could post to facebook and email my parents letting everyone know I was ok, to reading people’s messages worrying about me and it slowly dawning on me that this is A REALLY BIG FUCKING DEAL… to finally getting power and turning on the TV in Alex’s apartment only to see the tsunami footage and when I finally saw it on a real TV I just cried and cried… Sendai is only and hour and a half from Murayama, an hour from Yamagata City… we were so lucky here and they are just completely devastated… and I hated that we were just stuck in Yamagata City, I wanted to go DO something, go help, but of course what are they goign to do with some foreigner who speaks no Japanese and has very few skills applicable to a disaster scene? Not to mention, how to get there and a heap all other things, so I just donated to the Red Cross, what else what else? I felt so helpless, as if I was halfway around the world but also in the midst of it all at the same time. And then the nuclear reactors started threatening to melt down and then one of them exploded…

It’s really insane here. I’m too tired to write anything else.

It’s insane here, but I am OK.

Clea