Geisha, Interrupted

On Belonging

My husband takes his suit to the dry cleaners down the road. When he arrives, the woman behind the counter pauses to glare at a bright, chalky white stripe that spans across one sleeve.  

"What is this?" She asks him in Japanese.

"I`m not sure," he shrugs, "maybe it is paint."

"Paaaaaint?" the cleaner stares at the stain and then back at him in confused disbelief. "Maybe it's paint?"  

"I don't really know what it is," he admits, "this is the suit I wore on the 11th."

Instantly, the woman's expression softens and she nods her head meaningfully.  "Oh, of course," she understands now.  She understands perfectly.

They do not hesitate to share stories.  He explains how he walked in that suit for five hours along the highway, from Matsudo city back here to Ryogoku.  She relates that her husband walked for eight hours to reach their home from his office in Kawasaki city.  Likely his suit needed a good cleaning as well.  

*

Last week in Yokoami Park, I have climbed upon a rock to take pictures with my cell phone, because that is the kind of thing I often do.  I am trying to capture some early cherry blossoms with the Yokoami Outdoor Gallery (which consists entirely of charred metal relics from the 1923 earthquake) in the background, when an elderly woman passes by, walking a dog in a blue sweater.

 

"Be careful of earthquakes up there" she says to me.

"Ok," I heed her warning, stepping down from my perch.

"You too," I say, and she nods, even though she was not the one perched awkwardly on a rock just moments ago.  After I speak some encouraging words to her dog, she walks off in another direction and I climb back up on the rock.

It is an entirely unremarkable exchange between an elderly woman and a 30-year-old who still acts 12 sometimes.

Still the ordinary nature of our conversation feels incredibly refreshing somehow.   For the time being, people who approach me outside do not feel the need to welcome me to their country ( which, despite their good intentions, can get very old after 8 years.)  Strangers know better that to treat me like a guest in my own neighborhood, if only because all the guests are gone now.

*

"Do you have enough bottled water?" a Japanese acquaintance asks me when I visit her home on the day after radiation was detected in the tap water.  

"Yes, we have plenty," I assure her.  This woman has two small children, making her selfless offer all the more ridiculous.

"Are you sure?" she asks, wrinkling her brow.

"No, we really don't need it." I insist.  "I was about to offer you some of mine."

After a quiet pause, she accepts my refusal.  Perhaps this silence is the sound of her consciousness shifting ever so slightly.

The rules that dictate how "guests" should be treated here in Japan are no joke.  So if I were still a "guest" in her mind, this woman would have felt obligated to give me half the water she had, along with all her toilet paper and anything else around her house that I so much as complemented or admired.

Instead, we just engaged in some small talk, then went our separate ways.

Although I do not know how long it will last, I feel like there is a new kind of reciprocity between my neighbors and myself as a result of the disasters. We`ve all been on an emotional roller-coaster together over the last few weeks, and I hope that we can overcome this together as well.

As the plates below the ground fall back into place after any major seismic event, they tend to settle in slightly different formations. I wonder if so massive a quake might also shake our collective consciousness a bit, and alter the very foundation of who we are.  

"So," my dad asks me on skype the other evening, "is life starting to get back to normal yet there?"

"It's not going to be normal again here."  I tell him.  "Its going to be different.  But it is going to be ok."

When Apocaholics Attack

Is it easier to be afraid than it is to be sad?  I`m trying to figure this out without simultaneously becoming furious.

Last Wednesday morning, after over a week of meticulously tracking any and all developments at the tsunami-ravaged daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, I breathed a controlled sign of semi-relief to read that external power cables had been connected to all six reactors.

But then, unfortunately, I scrolled down the page ever so slightly, and could not help clicking on a link to the following article in The Boston Globe.

Fault Line Pressure Now Closer to Tokyo 

The recent monster quake that hit northeastern Japan altered the earth’s surface, geologists say, loading stress onto a different segment of the fault line much closer to Tokyo.

Scientists are quick to point out that this does not mean a powerful earthquake is necessarily about to strike the Japanese capital...But, given the vast population — Tokyo and its surroundings are home to 39 million people — any strong quake could be devastating(...)

Even weaker quakes that hit Tokyo have caused significant damage.

But last week’s tremor changed the coastal landscape, and not just above sea level. It created a trench in the sea floor 240 miles long and 120 miles wide, as one tectonic plate dove 30 feet beneath another, said Eric Fielding of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While that relieved stress at the breaking point, it appears to have piled pressure onto adjacent segments, said Brian Atwater, a geologist with the US Geological Survey. The added strain could now trigger a strong, deadly aftershock on Tokyo’s doorstep.

The shift in pressure is a common occurrence after strong quakes and happened after the 2004 mega-earthquake and tsunami off Indonesia that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations. Three months later, an 8.6-magnitude quake erupted farther down the fault line, killing 1,000 people on sparsely populated Nias island.

I will not lie: this article scared the living crap out of me.

And all this just after I opened my emergency cereal box to eat the bran flakes I had been saving for the nuclear winter.  Suddenly, my breakfast began to feel very unstable in my stomach and I felt the need to buy and hoard much, much more cereal so as to make up for such a foolish breakfast choice.  The evening prior, I had even dared to wonder just when I would start being able to fall asleep without resting my head beside a well-packed bag, stuffed for the purpose of fleeing in the middle of the night.  No time soon, the chill going down my spine confirmed.

Just as I paused to ponder such matters, at 8:47 pm to be exact, my cell phone abruptly commenced screaming at me.  If you live here, you know the sound I am talking about.  This early warning system is often more frightening than the strong aftershocks themselves, which usually come about 10 seconds after the alarm sounds. Usually, this gives you about enough time to find your cell phone and turn the awful noise off, then maybe put a pillow on your head for good measure.  This is not to say I am not impressed with the aftershock alarms:  those ten seconds are invaluable if you happen to be cooking on a gas stove, driving a car or standing on a step-ladder. Sadly though, the incredible technology of this early warning system is often overshadowed by the fact that its alarm makes the most unsettling, panic-inducing and generally irritating noise known to man.

And at this moment in particular, I all but jumped out of my skin.  Upon that awful screeching sound, my body reacted with a fit of near epileptic proportion, a physical reaction that I had never assumed myself capable of before.  The aftershock was long over by the time my insides tentatively settled back into my skin.

I can't live like this, I told myself.  Then I glanced at the article again.  

Was it really a coincidence that so unnerving a story should suddenly appear at the very same time that the smallest of positive developments were finally being reported out of Fukushima?  It felt almost as if, just as the mood in Tokyo seemed like it might breach sub-catastrophic levels, the media found a quick doomsday fix in another direction entirely.  Perhaps my English language newsfeed was grappling with a serious apocalypse addiction.

I felt like the article had taken something from me, the only true comfort that I dared to have amid all the chaos: the fact that the worst was probably over.  While a very strong earthquake had jolted Tokyo, the capital itself had largely survived it, proving to the world that its skyscrapers were indeed as earthquake-resistant as the architects claim. 

Even weaker quakes that hit Tokyo have caused significant damage.

This statement really bothered me.  I assumed that the author is referring to the 1855 and 1923 earthquakes that hit closer Tokyo, but these disasters can hardly be used as reference points anymore.  Nobody in modern Tokyo is about to fall underneath the wheel of a rickshaw, or be crushed by a telephone the size of a small refrigerator. And besides, almost all of the casualties in those quakes were caused by great fires, which spread rapidly in neighborhoods that one historian described to consist of "tinderboxes that could not be more flammable if they were designed expressly for burning."  

I recalled a conversation I had had last week with an elderly Tokyo resident who had actually lived through the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. She had told me that the March 11 quake was the strongest she had ever experienced in the capital, although she was quick to qualify how lucky we were that no fires ensued.

That, I think, settles it.  For those who live here I'm sorry to have to repeat what you already know, but the March 11 earthquake was a serious seismic event for Tokyo in its own right.  Most other cities across the globe would have toppled to the ground in such a tremor.  But Tokyo did not, and that in itself makes for a rather hopeful prognosis even if the apocaholics are right and a large aftershock does hit closer to the capital region.  Just how well the buildings in the capital did withstand the violent shaking on March 11 is conspicuously absent from the article.  

Moreover, the statement that: "The added strain could now trigger a strong, deadly aftershock on Tokyo’s doorstep," was not actually uttered by a scientist.  It was a conclusion drawn by the reporter after a scientist noted that the release of tension from one tectonic plate could possibly load more tension onto others.  He did not specify Tokyo, which comprises a relatively small region when we remember that one could practically trace a map of the Japanese archipelago just using its many fault lines as a reference.    

Media, I know it must be hard to think clearly when the world is about to end, but could we all just try a little harder next time?

Alas, I ask too much. Never take for granted the contagious nature of an apocalypse-driven narrative. Take for example these excerpts from BBC news, in an article called What Chance of a 'Big One' In Tokyo that appeared on my news feed later that same day.

Scientists are trying to establish if the Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake has altered the chances of a major tremor under Tokyo - or increased the risk of another tremor powerful enough to generate a tsunami(...)

This is home to one-quarter of Japan's population, as well as being the country's administrative and commercial centre.

Big quakes struck the area in 1703, 1855 and 1923, with the last claiming the lives of 100,000 people(...)

(Scientists) used seismic signals from 300,000 tremors of various sizes to build a three-dimensional view of what was going on deep in the Earth, much like a doctor might use X-ray tomography to scan tumours in the brain.

They found a 25km-thick fragment broken off one of the plates that they now believe plays a significant role in shaping seismic activity in the Kanto region - and by implication, the outlook for Tokyo.

"When it comes to Tokyo, things get immensely complicated," said Dr Stein.

"There seems to be broken pieces of plate that are jammed under Tokyo like a pill that won't go down your throat. And on top of that we have the two different slabs of plates beneath it, so there's really a triple stack of faults beneath Tokyo."

Ok, stop.  That's all very nice and scary, but saving the opening paragraph, none of the above is new information. A lot of the scientific evidence presented here is from a USGS study that was published five years ago, in 2006.  Most residents of Tokyo already know that three different tectonic plates intersect beneath it.  Hence all the preparedness.

Granted, anything can happen.  But we knew that already.  And yet you go on.

          (Data) also shows stresses increasing to the east of the Japan Trench...

The biggest concern, however, is Tokyo.

One curiosity is that Japanese researchers are currently very reluctant to talk on the issue.

Scientists we contacted - in one case, someone known to one of us for years - did not want to go on record.

Given the devastation caused by the tsunami and the fact that an event near Tokyo could do even more damage, the reluctance to talk is eminently understandable.

It can, however, be interpreted as a signal of real concern.

Yes, it is a sign of real concern that you are a crappy journalist.  Japanese seismologists are not part of some nationwide coverup to withhold the truth from you.  Rather, it is hardly surprising that experts are reluctant to associate themselves with the foreign media, whose recent reporting on the Japan crisis has been widely criticized here for its sensationalism and questionable science.

I keep asking myself why so many people seem to insist on staying afraid, despite hard evidence that could alleviate many concerns.  As I mentioned at the start of this post, perhaps it is easier to be afraid than it is to be sad.  Especially now. Should we choose to let go of our fear these days, what lies underneath is a crippling sadness: an utterly devastating sense of loss.  That in mind, it is no wonder so many of us remain apocaholics.

Vandals in Action

Much is often said about the reluctance of Japanese people to deface public property.  And basically, all of what you hear is true.

Or so I thought, until today.  

Today... I witnessed one of the worst displays of public vandalism I have ever seen in the eight years I have lived in this country. Yes, while waiting for the subway this morning, I was shocked to discover that some Japanese hooligans had scrawled mercilessly upon a defenseless paper notice, a sign taped to a vending machine, whose only crime had been to notify customers that the machine was turned off to conserve power.  It even politely apologized for the inconvenience.  Here is the poor abused notice below. (You may have to squint a little to see the pencil markings.)

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The scrawling above the official message reads as follows: "You should shut off that escalator too!" Upon deciphering this, I took a look to my left to see a fully functioning escalator just beside a working elevator.  

The degenerate- while his methods are questionable- had a point.

But this does not exonerate him of his crimes.  For graffiti is a contagious social ill, always threatening to spread among the most vulnerable and impressionable members of any society. Underneath, is my case in point.  Written in the awkward handwriting of a child or a foreigner, lies the ominous statement: "Let's make the station even darker."

Darker indeed, now that we all must live in the shadow of your terrible crime!

And just when it seems as if the sign's suffering might never end, another well-mannered Japanese kid has apparently gone bad. "But if the station is too dark," the child has scrawled on the sign: "people could fall and get injured."

Lights Out in Solidarity

When I first came to live in Tokyo, the abundance of neon felt surreal. These days though, it's the city's lack of visual over-stimulation that seems unreal. Before the earthquake it was hard to even picture Tokyo without its neon lights.  But here we are.

Kabukicho:

  

Shibuya Crossing:

Ginza:

While much has been said about the government-imposed rolling blackouts (which I have yet to experience),  I think it's striking that the vast majority of these blackouts are voluntary.  For the most part in central Tokyo, there is power.  People are just not using it.  

Everyone is doing his or her part to conserve electricity for the north.  Shop owners, almost universally, are choosing to turn off their neon signs. The stores are open for those who enter, but their normally blinding lights out on the streets are nearly invisible now. Residential apartments are dark inside.  Many citizens have told me that they are starting to go to bed early and wake up with the sun, in order to save the energy that lights up their homes at night. 

My husband and I try to keep the lights low, especially since the lamp by our window is very visible on the street at night, and we do not want the only lit window in the entire apartment to be ours.  

The darkness of the capital feels incredibly appropriate somehow.  Every partially lit shop I pass, is like a flag flown at half mast.  Every unlit window is a constant reminder that so many, so close to us, are going through such unimaginable suffering. With so much empathy everywhere I look, it becomes impossible to forget a what I saw in the news today. 

At the graduation ceremony for a junior high school in Miyagi, a father attends in place of his son who was washed away in the tsunami.  The man holds up a photograph of the boy in a baseball uniform as the accepts his son's diploma.

Moving through the train stations, the signs, billboards, clocks and vending machines that I had always presumed to be constructed of naturally glowing material, have all gone dark and are hardly visible.   

In Iwate, the results of the high school entrance exam- taken before the earthquake- are posted today.  A solemn-faced boy in his school uniform tells a reporter that he really wants to go tell his mother that he passed the test.  But she is still missing.

There are over 10,000 stories like these, and likely just as many darkened shops in the capital.  So perhaps it's my survivor's guilt talking, but personally, I am in no hurry to see the neon begin burning again.

I no longer want to take my own life for granted in the same way I had failed to appreciate many of my city's modern conveniences.

Why I Am Not Leaving Tokyo

I am not a particularly brave person.  Nor am I terribly magnanimous or self-sacrificing.  I am not ignorant either. If anything, I am over-informed. Everyone is a nuclear physicist these days, so I will not bore you with my own analysis of the radiation threat.  

A few months ago I had a nightmare.  I awoke from it abruptly, drenched in a cold sweat.  Immediately, I looked around my person so as to confirm that the dream had not been real.  In the nightmare, I had moved across town.  I no longer lived here in the old city, where I open my door to greet the Sumida river every morning. Instead, my husband and I had made the terrible decision to move into a cheaper, concrete jungle of a neighborhood in another ward.

It seems ridiculous in light of recent events, but that was really the extent of my bad dream. Leaving the city itself, it seems, was too horrible to even dream about. It was literally unimaginable. 

The main reason my husband and I have elected to stay in Tokyo during this especially trying and unnerving time, is fairly simple: It is our home.

Having relocating here after graduating college about eight years ago, it is safe to say I have lived in Japan all of my adult life.  That said, it amazes me how many people- Japanese and foreign alike- have been giving me advice under the assumptions that a) they are experts in radiation and b) Japan is not my true "home." Just because we were not born here and are not members of the Japanese race, per-se,  it is suddenly as if my husband and I are only on a very long vacation among the Japanese.

This is just wrong.  Tokyo is my home and my community.  I pay taxes here and am well acquainted with all the employees at the local grocery stores and fish markets. Down the street from me lives a girl who is entering the sixth grade this April.  She has been my private student- my favorite, I will add- since she was a first-grader. Every Wednesday night after I finish her lesson, her grandmother serves me dinner. Every Wednesday night for the past five years.  My unsolicited advisors, does that sound like a vacation to you?

When I think of "going home," I think of our apartment in Ryogoku, with its tatami floors, sliding doors and balcony upon which I beat the crap out of our futon every Sunday afternoon. 

I had the opportunity to very inarticulately explain some such sentiments today, when my husband and I were interviewed by a Taiwanese television network (in Japanese, no less!) at the metropolitan government building in Shinjuku where they were accepting donations to send up north to the affected areas.

"What have you brought here?" the reporter asked us at first.

"Basically the stuff that we read they were accepting," I hope that I conveyed (I'm finding that my Japanese becomes fairly broken in very stressful situations). "Daipers, heating pads, fever-reducing sheets, that sort of stuff."

"Where did you find these goods? Did you have them at home?"

"No," I said, "we spent the morning going to different drugstores and supermarkets around the city, to see what they had left."

Even though we couldn't find many of the goods which are needed, I would have said to the camera if I had even a fraction of my wits about me at the time, it lifted our spirits a great deal just to feel, however briefly, that this was something we could do to ease the suffering up there.  While we were out in search of supplies, sometimes it was hard not to feel like our efforts were futile as we stared at so many empty shelves.  Still that feeling of helplessness was completely erased when we saw how many other people, from all walks of life, have inundated this building with similar relief supplies, with whatever they could find. Now I know for sure that sticking around and doing everything I can to help out my adopted community is the only course right now that is powerful enough to give me any comfort at all.

But I didn't say any of that.  I was too freaked out by the camera and the microphone.   

Then however, she asked a question that I felt very strongly about.  "So a lot of foreign residents are fleeing the country.  Do you plan to go home too?"

"It is true." I took a breath and told her,"that a lot of foreigners I know are leaving or have already left. But for me," I went on, "when I think of the word 'home,' I think of Tokyo. I think of right here."

"Do you still have confidence in Japan?" was the last question she asked me.

"Absolutely," I replied. "The Japanese people are amazing. I absolutely believe in Japan."  

And looking at these pictures that I took in and around the metropolitan building this morning, who wouldn't?

 

 

Tokyo's Killer Disco

As I am preparing what might possibly be the most kombu saturated miso soup ever created (kombu is a source of iodine), I suddenly stop in my tracks and start to laugh.  My husband, who sits on the couch in an adjacent room playing Fallout on his xbox, pauses for a moment to ask me what is so funny.  From the look on his face, perhaps he thinks I have finally lost my mind.

"Shibuya Eggman."  I explain as I gasp for air.  "It never stops... being funny. It just... never...stops." 

Yes, it is true. Finally, finally something is funny again here in Tokyo.  And there is no one to thank but the folks over at Fox News, who recently displayed this lovely graphic on one of their "news programs."

Now, what I`m wondering now is, If Fox News is going to put a nuclear reactor in a Shibuya nightclub, why Eggman?  There are plenty of other nightclubs in the Shibuya district with more appropriate names, as far as nuclear power goes. They could have easily gone with "Gaspanic," "Club Atom" or "Hazard".

But Eggman?  Just...why?  

 

 

And that doesn't even touch upon the mind boggling logistics of "how".

Just to add to the general sense of fun, the website for Shibuya`s eggman club now offers the following disclaimer:

一部で　shibuya eggman が原子力施設であるという報道がありましたが全く事実と異なります。(It has been reported that shibuya eggman contains a nuclear reactor, but this is completely false.)

音楽を愛する皆様の心が原動力となってます。(The source of our power is found the hearts of everyone who loves music.)

Good to know.

Thinking of Miyagi

...a lot these days.  In early July of 2007, I traveled to the Tohoku region of Japan with my mother, who came to attend a conference in Sendai.  Before returning home, we met up with my husband (my fiance at the time) and did some sightseeing along the northeast shoreline.  One place we visited was a little coastal town called Matsushima.  

This is my mom, who would surely not approve of my posting her picture here. Still I made her promise me that she would never read this blog, so as long as you don't tell her, she'll never know.

It rained, I remember, because it always rains in early July.  

Eventually, we took refuge in a little tea shop that boasted green tea and soft-served ice cream.  It was run by a little old man, who was missing half his teeth. "Where are you visiting from?" he asked me, his lack of teeth not inhibiting his smile in the slightest.  "Tokyo," I told him.  Then I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable, for him to stare blankly at my complexion and clarify: no, I mean where are you really from: England or Australia?  But he didn't say that.

"Tokyo eh?" he replied instead. "You must be rich!" 

Startled by his response, I vigorously nodded my head back and forth.  We laughed. I liked him.

I hope he is ok.

Sadly though, Google's people finder has not yet become so advanced that I can search for "that toothless old man who served me ice cream in that cafe across the street from Matsushima station."  

I`m not going to post any images here of what that costal area looks like now.  Most likely, you have already seen them on the news. Instead, I will show you the beautiful town- full of beautiful people- that I once visited.  

Someday, I hope to visit there again.

Playing Normal

On the Tokyo metro and the JR yesterday, it was back to work, if you had to be.   And apparently, I cope with fear by taking pictures...

 

 

Tokyo, Interrupted

Disclaimer:  This is only one person's first-hand account of the earthquake and its aftermath in Tokyo. Other areas of the nation were hit much harder than the capital, and have suffered far greater misfortune.  For information on that story, please turn on the news. I am not a journalist.

 
So it's yesterday at  2:45 or so.  I am underground, on the Marunouchi line between Honjo-sanchome and Korakuen stations, flinging angry birds at evil green pigs, who are pimped out for St. Patrick's Day this month. Then the train stops abruptly.  

I first assume that we hit something, or a suicidal someone, which happens more often than we like to talk about in this country.  At the same time I grasp the unlikelihood that a suicidal someone could wander this far underground, it becomes very apparent that our train did not flatten anything else.  Rather, this train is the one getting its ass kicked by a force much larger.

"Train operation has stopped because of an earthquake," the voice of the conductor says. Umm, we know, I think to myself as the other passengers and I hold onto our seats.

"Train operation has stopped because of a strong earthquake," the loudspeaker again proclaims the obvious.

"Train operation has stopped because of a very strong earthquake," he says again after the shaking still hasn't stopped.  

Luckily, before the conductor can declare the existence of a quite very, very strong earthquake, the ground seems to settle down.

Nobody is saying a word.  Two ojii-sans sitting across from me are the only ones who dare to open their mouths, and even then they only let out muffled, gutteral non-words like "ah" and "ooh," in their deep old man voices.  Other than that it is dead silent.  "This is the strongest tremor I've ever felt in my life," the old man, the first of anyone around me to speak in a complete sentence, quietly tells his friend, who nods in agreement.  I take a closer look at his face.  He appears to be about seventy. 

Fuck.  

Then more shaking. Passengers hold on to their seats, as if we are in a tin can that is being shaken up by some naughty kid.  Just don't try to open it and you will be fine. Or so says Our Fearless Conductor. 

"Inside the train is the safest place to be." His voice echoes throughout the cars. "Whatever you do, don`t open the emergency doors. Do not exit the train. Inside the train is the safest place to be." His voice quavers, making him seem less sure of himself. Still a few moments later, his voice resounds quite loudly again . "I repeat, DO NOT EXIT THE TRAIN!"

Exit the train?  I think. Really?  Exit the train and do what exactly?  Hop out and wander alone through an underground train passage?  It sounds ridiculous.  It is ridiculous and it is horrifying.  Horrifying, because there is absolutely nothing we can do but be still and wait, and hope, for the cars to move forward again.  To do anything but nothing would not only be futile, it would be insane.  So I just sit there with my head in my hands, trying to banish any thoughts of fire or derailment or oxygen supplies from my head.  It is hard to do, but I manage because something even more pressing is on my mind: where is my husband right now?  Where is my very close friend, who is seven months pregnant?

I see that everybody, and by everybody I mean absolutely everybody, is suddenly clutching onto his or her cell phone for dear life.  Everyone is trying to call out, but no one is getting through.  Of course no one is getting through.  We are underground. I wonder why the others don`t know that.  Still after a few moments I start to wonder if they know something I don`t, and soon I have joined everyone in praying to the cell phone god for a miracle.  Yet there is no love, no immaculate reception to write about today.  But you knew that already.    

Finally, finally the train starts to move. 

The Marunouchi line usually runs underground, but makes a cameo appearances above street level at a few stations.  The station we are heading to, Korakuen, happens to be above ground.  As the train inches up towards daylight, I am in the front car, where a few people are now rushing up to accompany me there, to look out the window.  As the train creeps above ground we all hold our breath.  

"Daijoubu da sou." The old man across from me tells his friend, as the city, still standing, comes into view.  It looks alright.

"Sou mitain da na." His friend responds. It seems like it does.

"Demo, kaeranai to wakannai na," The first man is sure to qualify.  But you don`t really know until you get home.

"Kaeranai to wakaranai." I hear this phrase repeated over and over as I get off the train and take refuge in a nearby park.  We won`t know how bad it is until we get home.  And for most of us, without working trains, home is suddenly very, very far away.

As I pace around this park in circles, unable to keep still for more than a moment, the god of cell phones continues not to love me.  Again, everyone is clutching a phone, yet almost no one is speaking into one.  There is no reception.  Not when the entire city- no, the entire country- is trying to call each other at once.  In this park, nobody knows what is going on.  There are sirens and helicopters, which all seem to be headed towards the same location, but that is all we know.  We hope that our loved ones are not also in the direction.  But we cannot know for sure.  

After a while this, I get frustrated with my phone and start using it for another purpose entirely: to take pictures of people whose expressions best illustrate how I am also feeling.  These are taken within the first hour after the earthquakes, in and around Korakuen station, as people are gradually realizing the severity of this event. 

 

 

 

In Japan, most elementary school students take the trains to and from school by themselves.  It`s safe to say that almost none of the kids in these pictures know where their parents are yet.  So they are remarkably calm, considering.  As I was exiting the station I noticed one little girl who was crying.  Almost immediately, a complete stranger- a woman of about my age- approached and comforted her, offering the girl the use of her cell phone and proposing that they stand in line for the pay phone together.  As I am circling the park a half hour later, I notice that this same woman is still by the girl`s side.  Seen below on the left, the girl (apparently joined by a friend now) is no longer crying.

Many non-Japanese are surprised when they learn that most children commute to school alone here, but it has always seemed to me that, although these kids routinely board the commuter trains without parents, it is as if the entire community watches over them instead.  In the park, as I notice more and more adults become concerned about these kids` well-being, I realize how true that is.  

I wish there is more I could do for these kids, but being tall and foreign and all, I sort of freak them out anyway and I don't want to make them any more afraid than they already are.  Maybe that is why, about an hour later when I finally get text messages from my husband and my close friend- informing me that they are ok- I decide to go to work.

Work is in Myogadani, one station over from Korakuen.  I decide to walk the rest of the way, to the house of the small children I am scheduled to tutor in English that afternoon.  But tutor is a strong word.  Actually, I just play with them.  I have known this family for years.  All I want is to see a face that I know.  I am tired of walking in circles by myself.  

When I get there, the children's mother is quite surprised to see me, but welcomes me in all the same.  It isn`t until I see the TV screen in their house that I realize how horrible this disaster truly is.  I play the kids while their mother locates her husband and other members of her family on a cell phone app of sorts.  Every time I look up from the books I am reading to them, to sneak a glance at the destruction on the TV, the kids look up too.  So I try not to look up from the books or the games. When I am done teaching her kids, the mother invites me to stay the night, because the trains still aren't running, but I decide to walk home.  I need to walk home.

"Kaeranai to wakaranai," I tell her.　I won't really know what's going on until I get home.  So she feeds me onigiri, I hug her kids, and I am on my way.  About three hours of walking later, I feel immensely grateful and fortunate to reach my apartment, where there is only some minor dry wall damage.  But most importantly, I am grateful to see my husband, who has just walked all the way home from his job in Chiba prefecture to our apartment in Ryogoku.  I  have not let him out of my sight since. 

P.S.

Ok, ok you win.  You are no longer orange, ok?  Good.  Perhaps web design is not in my future after all.  But I'm cool with that.