Earthquake

I've been really bad at keeping this blog up the last few months. It would seem only something monumental could make me complete it. However something monumental happened a couple of days ago. Here is my account of what happend.

I’ve been living on Tokyo Bay for almost a year now and my time here is coming to a close. The end of the Japanese Academic year is upon us, which is why it was Graduation day this Friday at my Junior High School. The graduation ceremony went ahead as planned. The students sang songs to each other and thanked each other for their friendship over the last three years. It was a very emotional morning for many and many tears were shed.

After everything was packed up from the graduation ceremony, I waved goodbye to the students for the last time and for the first time, since I’ve been here, the students went home early at lunchtime. Japan has a huge culture of gift giving, and so many students gave small ‘omiyage’ gifts of food to all the staff. After the last student had left I returned to a small feast of treats in the staffroom and was asked to give a farewell speech.

Earthquakes are fairly common in my region. We get them about once a month but recently there had been a few slightly stronger ones occurring up north. So when the school nurse turned said something about an earthquake, my reply was ‘When?’. Her prompt reply was ‘NOW!’, at which point I noticed the, then gentle, rocking of the room. At first no one was particularly worried. We opened the doors, as is usual practise, and several of the teachers began to grab hold of objects that had the potential to topple over, such as the giant new Mitsubishi flat screen TV. At this point I looked above my head to assess if there was anything that could potentially fall on me and was disturbed to see a huge wobbling air-conditioning unit above my head. I decided I better move to the centre of the room. The staff room is boarded by large metal filing cabinets and cupboards, some stacked on top of each other; these were increasingly beginning to rattle and rock and, so a few more teachers came to join me in the centre of the room. Many of my colleges began to cry ‘sugoi’, which would be best translated as ‘awesome’ in that it can be used in a light hearted fashion to mean ‘cool’ or in a more serious nature to mean ‘formidable’. This time it was definitely being used to mean the latter.

For maybe 30 seconds me, and about 7 teachers, stood around getting increasingly shaken about by the quake. It was a bit like being on a pirate ship at a theme park that starts with a gentle swaying but gradually gets bigger and bigger. I could feel the fear levels in the room beginning to rise and the persistent call of ‘sugoi’ were being coupled with ‘abunai’; ‘dangerous’. At a certain point we realised that it definitely was getting bigger and definitely wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. One of the teachers decided it was time to evacuate and I followed suit. Unfortunately the staffroom was on the 1st floor, so we not only had to run the gauntlet of the corridors but also had to get down the stairs, which was a bit of a struggle at the peak of a magnitude 6. Thankfully there was a banister, which I held onto more than I’ve ever needed to. On existing the school we found that the small pond out the front was swashing around like a stormy ocean. Waves from the earthquake were displacing large amounts of water all over. It was a really strange sight. As we walked outside it felt like being on the deck of a boat or being a little drunk. What with the nervous excitement and the shaking I began to feel a little seasick. Many of us were finding it difficult to stand and so we all sat or crouched in centre of the car park, well away from the buildings. All the cars in the car park were rocking back and forth, the flag poles were swaying and the whole earth was rattling. It was pretty hairy stuff but I was glad to be in one of the most open places I know in Japan. The Head Teacher stayed in the school with a couple of other members of staff. It was as if he was the captain of the Titanic and he had to go down with the school. For minute after minute the ground continued to sway (and has continued to do so intermitted since) but eventually it lessened and lessened and finally it was safe to go back in the school.

On the way back in to the building, we noticed that the waves had displaced some tadpoles from the pond, which the science teacher attempted to save. Then we all went in and crowded around the TV, which immediately began issuing tsunami warnings. I was fairly unaware of the magnitude of the quake. Japan gets so many quakes that many don’t make the local news, let alone the national or international. However, I soon found out that it was the largest earthquake that most of the staff had experienced so I decided I better contact my family to say that I was ok and that as far as I knew, my friends were ok. I tried to get on the Japanese Meteorological Agency website, which gives the most up-to-date information on earthquakes, but it was so busy it was blocked.

About five minutes after we returned to the staffroom the first aftershock struck. This time I grabbed my camera, as we evacuated and I managed to film the pond swashing around the second time and the rocking of the cars. After the quake died down we once again returned to the staff room and gawped at the images that were beginning to appear on the TV screens. The true magnitude and horror of the earthquake began to sink in. What we felt as a magnitude 6 quake actually occurred almost 300 miles away and was an 8.9. And the worst was yet to come; there was a colossal tsunami fast approaching the east coast and about to hit the prefecture I live in, Chiba.

I was told that I was free to go but to take care crossing the river, as the tsunami might flow in and engulf the bridge. And so I said my final goodbye to the staff and made my way homeward on my bike. As soon as I got out of the school grounds I could see large black plumes of smoke rising on the horizon. I later learned that this was an oil refinery ablaze in Ichihara, two towns away and seemed to be the biggest fire of the quake. I didn’t have any trouble at the river and actually managed to cycle through a level 5 aftershock, without noticing.

When I got back to my flat I found several possessions had found their way to the floor but nothing had broken. My bedroom was utter mess but that had far more to do with me leaving it in a complete mess than the earthquake. After replying to a substantial number of concerned messages, more and more details of the scale of the quake and tsunami emerged. I didn’t ever imagine it would have been the largest recorded in Japanese history, or that it would have shifted the earth’s axis.

Details began to emerge about some of my friend’s ordeals, which made me feel quite lucky. One of my friends lives in Ichihara, very near the oil refinery that blew up. He rode out the quake alone, in his rickety old apartment, and was then thrown off his bike from the explosion at the oil refinery. After being told to evacuate his apartment, he found all the evacuation centres full and had to return home alone. I’m also worried about another friend in Ibaraki prefecture, where the quake and the tsunami were not only stronger but there are also potential problems with radiation.

Its Sunday morning now and things are beginning to get back to normal except the ground hasn’t stopped shaking. What used to be the biggest earthquake in three months, happens about every hour and smaller tremors are intermittent between them. After a long boat ride one sometimes feels the strange illusion of the ground moving like a ship, when you return to dry land. I regularly get feelings similar to that, when I’m not sure if I’m imagining small tremors or not. The earthquake alarm on my phone has been going off about every three hours and is not conducive to sleep but the nervous excitement has somewhat spoiled my appetite for sleep anyhow.

The eventuality of an earthquake has always been in the back of my mind while I’ve been in Japan but I would never have dreamed of being in the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan. I was lucky to be somewhere rural, with company and somewhere unaffected by tsunamis. My thoughts and prayers go out to those up north that were not so fortunate.

New Music

I’ve been exploring a lot of new music tonight. I started out listening to Best Coast, a Californian girl that has an innocent voice, much like Alessi’s (Alessi’s Ark) and kind of reminds me of Camera Obscurer but yet her songs are much heavier and fuzzier in their production. The song writing style reminds me of the Vaselines, with some perfect little hooky lines constructed around the most economical use of 3 chords. Its not the kind of music that I could listen to for weeks on end but the girl had some really little pop tunes. The Best Coast Youtube videos led me to a band called Male Bonding, who are an East London outfit that have a similar fuzzy Vaselinezy sound but with a bit more punk than pop. Then later on the Guardian website I stumbled across a girl called Anna Calvi, who has just put out a record on Domino and seems to be the PJ Harvey of the next generation (without wanting to pigeonhole her too much). She had a really strong and powerful and confident voice and wasn’t afraid to experiment a little with her song writing, in a way that reminded me of Polly Jean. Being away from ‘home’ has put me more in touch with current affairs in the UK, as I browse the news websites daily but I have become increasingly out of touch with music, so I feel the need to catch up a little, especially in time for my arrival at Glastonbury. That catch up started tonight.

The apologetic January post

I apologise for not keeping up with this. My poor excuses are a mixture of being less enthused by exciting new things in Japan as I become increasingly acclimatised but also because I’ve been trying to pursue other goals, such as running more often, reading more and keeping in better touch with people at home.

December didn’t get a look in on here. There wasn’t an awful lot of exciting new territory to write about in Japan and much of the month was overshadowed by mounting distress about my trip home, due to the chaos that occurred across Britain because of snow, which eventually caused my flight to be cancelled. Needless to say I made it home, a day late but so much more grateful to be back. It was great to see people once again but a shame I didn’t get to see everyone. I enjoyed the homeliness of cosy centrally heated pubs more than ever and really appreciated a greater variety of beer, far more fresh fruit and veg and the ability to speak English to anyone I wanted. The family spent Xmas day around my sister's for the first time, which was a welcome change for everyone. The food was fab (Thanks once again Anne).

January went off to a good start in London and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get back into the swing of things in the capital. On returning to Japan, I’ve been blessed with extremely sunny but rather chilly weather, which I’ve really enjoyed. This month I visited my first Japanese castle (a small local one that Will and I had to ourselves) and the first visit of a helicopter to my school (a truly surreal experience). I had a fabulous night out seeing the Mystery Jets DJ and even had a brief chance to catch up with Blaine. I enjoyed attending a German party this weekend, in Chiba shi, where we were all serenaded by the charming Herr Alex Zeck. But on the whole January has been a fairly frugal, as I’m really trying to save for my trip to China. I’ve also bought some flights to Kyushu, where I intend to travel to Hiroshima from, just before I leave for China. Travelling around Japan isn’t cheap and so this really isn’t conducive to my saving but I don’t feel I can leave Japan without seeing Hiroshima.

I promise I will keep you better updated for the following final months.