Geisha, Interrupted

Seduce This

It is the evening of March 10, 2011, and I can`t seem to sleep. I am too busy flipping between two books on my kindle app. Both these books are about novel writing, and purport to give aspiring authors advice on the creative process. They are written by two of my favorite authors ever: Haruki Murakami and Erica Jong. So naturally I find myself hanging onto every word.

Of course, I only get around to reading such things after my novel is finished, and passed onto the hands of a very busy agent who will decide its fate for the moment. Work with the same novel for two years and I promise, you will start to feel very lonely without the company of all your characters once they are all passed into the hands of another- a complete stranger, no less- for review.  

So my time is spent my making a long list of agents to query just as soon as the current one rejects me.  Yet this rejection is taking quite a bit longer than others in the past.  I don`t know what to do with myself.  I have even attempted to revive my blog after two long years of neglecting her for my novel.  It is then that I, somewhat helplessly, turn towards the advice in these books.

Haruki Murakami says that writing a novel is like running a marathon.  He mentions how important it is for a novelist to have are focus and endurance.  Focus means being able to stare at a computer screen and do nothing but write for hours at a time without any distractions.  I think that means no facebook, twitter or various other time wasting endeavors such as googling all the people I hated in high school.

If that is the case, I am screwed.

So I switch books, and sooner than not Erica Jong is describing the shrivled member of an elderly publishing executive In rancid detail. As it turns out, she literally had to give this man a blow job in order to advance her standing with him and the company.  I am glad it is not the seventies anymore, but unfortunately I do not think I will ever get that image out of my head, ever.

Back to Haruki.  He writes casually about all the marathons he has run, and laments about how much older he has gotten and how much harder that makes the whole process.  I think I am supposed to make most of the connections between running and writing by myself.

I enjoy running too, but I am gradually realize that when I run it is nothing like the calm, meditative running that he engages in.  Rather, I run in manic bursts along the Sumida river, blasting music so loudly into my ears it can likely be heard on the other side of the water.  I write in very much the same manner, although much more quietly. 

More than that, I can`t get over the fact that Haruki is still listening to an MD player. He is even proud of it- of not owning an ipod- because apparently, he does not want "to mix music and computers. Just like it`s not good to mix friends and work, and sex."  

Ok, ok, but an md player?  Could there be anything more obscure?  It is impossible for me to lose respect for the man, but honestly, what a dork.  Where does he buy parts for it if it breaks?  Maybe he goes to one of those retro electronics shops in Akihabara where people go to play Atari and the original gameboys when they are feeling nostalgic for the bubble.

Back to Erica Jong.

Now she recounts the fable of a women who is seduced by an ugly man who claims to be a demon.  Eventually she begins to suspect that he is actually an man- not the otherworldly beast he claims to be- still the lovers struggle to keep the illusion alive anyway.  For if the fantasy were to disappear, that spark that egnited their magical, demonic lovemaking would be extinguished. 

According to Jong, there is no metaphor for the writing process more precise.

"The job of the writer is to seduce the demons of creativity and make up stories," she says. "Often you go to bed with a man who claims to be a demon and later you find out he`s just an everyday slob.  By then he may have inspired a novel.  The novel remains though the demon has departed."  

I don`t get it.

I read this over and over, trying to understand it.  Unsuccessful, I vow to resume and possibly finish these two books the next night.

Obviously this does not happen.  

The next day the world is shaken upside down.  And to a large extent, it remains that way even now.

I am just opening these books again for the first time today.  Actually I have been quite busy the past couple of months on another draft of the novel.

You see, that agent who was talking so long to reject me on the night of March 10, actually gets back to me a week or so after the earthquake to inform me that I "have written a genuinely moving novel" and that she is "seriously interested in taking on for representation."

Who knew.

So now I have a cool new agent, and we decide on some minor changes I need to make for the next draft.  Since completing that task last weekend, I finally have some free time again- at least until I find out everything thats wrong with the current manuscript- so maybe I will finally get to finishing those books on novel writing.  Or not.  I haven`t decided yet.

p.s.

 

The Most Distinguished Teachers

“Welcome to my house,” S turns to us with a wry smirk. “Please come in and make yourself at home!”

We chuckle at his joke very cautiously, ascending three concrete steps that lead up to a wooden floorboard.

That S has maintained his sense of humor is a great feat, I think, considering that those steps and that floorboard are all that remain of his home.

Rather than wallowing in the loss of all his possessions, however, S has started a non-profit organization, whose sole purpose is to visit shelter after shelter- where thousands of city residents are still living in cardboard partitioned “rooms” on gymnasium floors, and engage the children living there in fun, developmentally appropriate activities.

My husband and I are volunteering with his organization in Ishinomaki and Higashi Matsushima for the weekend, and this has kept us extremely busy so far.  We are playing soccer, freeze tag and dodge ball, making arts and crafts, organizing an English conversation class, assisting in mochitsuki (a rice-pounding ritual), and even having an all out sports festival (undoukai) in a parking space that usually fits about four cars, in a part of town where all the parks have become makeshift wreckage dumps.

Through the course of the weekend, we make seven visits to different evacuation shelters.  A very busy guy, S is constantly talking on his cell phone while driving, only to toss the device onto the floor of his vehicle whenever a patrol car passes- which happens quite often- without much explanation to whoever he is talking to.  He then picks the phone up and calls the person back as if nothing happened.  This is quite amusing for anyone in the car at the time.

If we had seen the wreckage of his house the evening prior, we would never have accepted his family`s invitation to eat dinner at S`s eldest sister`s house, where the entire extended family is taking refuge together.  They consist of S`s other older sister- who also lost her house- her two elementary school aged children, their grandparents, and the eldest sister`s family themselves, which includes a 17-year-old boy, a senior in high school, who smokes Marlboro Reds like a chimney.

Using the eldest sister`s house as a base, the entire family is helping to run S`s non-profit organization.  Even the eldest son, while he is not smoking, comes along to assist and even lead volunteer groups at the shelters.  He has become very popular among the children despite his somewhat intimidating punk-rock style, complete with dyed-red hair and multiple earrings. 

At dinner, we try to teach them English conversation in an effort to repay them for their great hospitality. The family has a quirky, light-hearted sense of humor.  For example, at dinner S asks me if, in America, other people get angry when somebody farts.  When the family drops us off at the tent city that has enveloped Senshu university, where most volunteers are staying, he parks the family car in the spot marked “school principal,” and everybody laughs.

“It is the spot for the most distinguished of teachers.” Somebody says, giggling. Through my own laughter, I know that there is no parking space more fitting for this family’s car. 

(S, at his "house")

 (S`s niece and nephew's former elementary school)

(SDF troop outside the school.)

(Mochitsuki)

(Playground)

(Crafts!)

 

Playing Catastrophe

Yesterday afternoon, my 4-year-old student spontaneously decides that his blue blanket is a giant wave.  The wave then soars and crashes around his playroom, uprooting every stuffed animal, action figure and lego in its path. 

"What happened to all of our friends?" I inquire about the toys, trying to solicit a past tense verb. 

"It`s aalll destrooooyed!"  He practically shouts, "Everything is destroooyed!!" 

While I applaud his use of sophisticated vocabulary, my heart sinks into my stomach. 

Maybe on some level he knows that a wave was the reason his preschool`s production of "The Hungry Caterpillar"- for which he had been cast in the lead role- had to be cancelled back in March, even though he had already made his costume and had memorized all of his lines (and everyone else`s too!) flawlessly. 

Luckily for all his toys, it is not long before the boy morphs into an alien spider monkey (I am not making this up) and zaps the wave into oblivion with his laser beam. 

"Ok, the end!" I say "Let`s play something els--"

"No!" he shouts defiantly, "Again!"  

I should have known better.  When a four-year-old thinks up a good game, it is never, ever satisfactory to play it just once.  Before I know it, the evil blanket wave is already in motion again. 

"Oh where, oh where is alien spider monkey when we need him the most?"

I remember reading somewhere, just after the earthquake, that it is important not to stop children from playing "earthquake" or "tsunami" reenactment games, because kids work out their trauma through play in a manner similar to the way adults work through their issues in dreams. 

From what I saw during my time at the shelters in Fukushima, however, "tsunami" has yet to become so popular a game.  I suppose it is hard to work through a trauma that is very much still going on.  Nobody wants to play "earthquake" when the real thing is still happening on a daily basis.  It just feels stupid and boring.  

Balloon popping, on the other hand, is a very good game, especially when there is a giant box in the corner of the playroom of partially deflated rabbits, dachshunds giraffes, flowers and swords.  Such a box becomes inevitable when clowns and the like have been showing up on a regular basis for months, and their tricks always include balloon animals for everyone.  

I have been working with Japanese kids for years, and I have never seen them purposely try to pop balloons, let alone get so enthusiastic about it.  More than that, this group is made up entirely of girls, ages 2 to 12.  Japanese girls in this age group are generally very afraid of popping balloons.

However, it becomes a very different ballgame when you are holding the child-safe scissors in your own hands, and you have complete control over which balloons are destroyed and which ones, if any, are saved.

"Raise your hand if you like the balloon popping game!" calls out an eight year old.

"Haaaai!"

"Now raise your hand if you want to pop more!"

Everyone raises her hand except the oldest, an 8th grader who complains that the game is very mottai nai, wasteful, and nobody wants to be wasteful these days.  

And then there are the two brothers, aged about 5 and 11, who are not paying any attention.  They keep mostly to themselves in another corner, reading manga and playing with dinosaurs.  Perhaps they are somewhat intimidated by a playroom overrun by hyperactive girls.

The boys, I had learned from another volunteer the day before, are originally from Fukushima but had been living in a shelter in Saitama, further south.  Unfortunately, these boys were teased at their school in Saitama- for being "radioactive" even while they have certificates to certify that they have not been exposed to radiation- and so the family has returned Fukushima as a result.

I join the boys in the corner, with a box of stickers, some writing utensils and bunch of pre-stapled blank books. 

The 5-year-old makes a book about dinosaurs, because he is obsessed with them. His older brother, to his own gradually overflowing amusement, authors a darling little book he has entitled "kyoufu no hon," or "book of horrors." 

"Book of Horrors," as it happens, contains the most terrifying images that an 11-year-old boy can imagine within the confines of a pen, paper and a box of stickers.

The Cat in The Hat, for one, has been behaving very badly.

And below we have a "dinosaur with a hangover" which is certainly a very terrifying thought.

If it were up to me, "Book of Horrors" would become an instant classic. I am not an expert or anything, but I think that creativity can be a good way of reasserting control over at least some aspects of our environment.

It reminds me of the instance, at a different shelter on another day, when some news media shows up to take some pictures of the kids in the playroom.  When this happens another volunteer- quite brilliantly I think- lends one of the kids his own giant camera, empowering the junior high school boy to take his own pictures of the media and of everyone else who happened to be around at the time.  The boy seems to enjoy this very much.  And then, some time around the tenth or so photo he shoots of me, I feel the need to take out my own cell phone camera as well.  

So here we are.

Fukushima Ga Suki!!

I  amfinethankyou. 

So reads the first line of a text message I just received from a 12-year-old girl.   She is certainly trying very hard to be finethankyou.  It is hard enough to be in the seventh grade, let alone to do so while living in a sports stadium-turned-shelter for who knows how much longer.  Still she smiles all of the time.  She is on the basketball team at her new school and also enjoys painting her toenails.

Until two months ago her home was in Minami-soma, a city within the evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but we never talk about that.  Instead we shoot inflatable beach balls into a hula hoop that is secured high upon the wall with duct tape, and it is harder than it looks.

Last Sunday night I returned to Tokyo from two weeks of volunteer work with children from 1 to 15 years old, who have evacuated to a safer part of Fukushima prefecture.

Going to Fukushima by myself- as the only foreign volunteer within an otherwise all Japanese organization- was not easy.  And in retrospect, I am enormously grateful for the courage to have taken this leap of faith.  Before March 11th, I could never see myself taking time off work to go join a group of volunteers- all of whom were complete strangers- in an unfamiliar city.  But the natural disaster really changed me. It changed a lot of us.

More importantly, it has made the kids in the shelters so incredibly brave.  I have come to admire each one of them so immensely.  

As volunteers, our job there was to create spaces for children where they could play normally.  The goal was to play with them and cheer them up, helping them to forget their difficult circumstances for the duration of one game of freeze tag or hide-and-seek.  In many cases however, it was the children who cheered us up instead.  Kids, I think, naturally have a certain amount of happy energy that almost nothing can take from them, and when they give it away it only multiplies.  

And multiply it did.  It feels strange to write this, but I truly had a great time up in Fukushima. In fact, I probably laughed more in the past two weeks than I have so far all year.

And guess what, I made another youtube video!  I did not take that many pictures of the kids I worked with, mostly because they are all quite sick of having their pictures taken by the media and such.  As efforts have been made to blur the kids` faces for ethical reasons, please take me at my word that they are very, very cute. The rest of the shots are of the city and of myself and the other volunteers, acting rather childlike ourselves even when the kids were not around.

I hope you like the background song, which was especially written to support Fukushima.  The first time I heard it, blaring out of the loud speakers on the shopping street in the village we stayed in, I almost fell to my knees laughing. When the chorus arrives, you will see why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Time

It doesn`t feel like it has been a month.  It seems like has been far shorter and far longer than that, all at the same time.  Shorter, because the tension has still not eased, because sometimes I turn on the news and I still don't believe the characters I read. Longer, because there have been so many twists and turns in the situation, each day bringing a unique aftershock or news scare.

It is as if time restarted itself on March 11th and now moves at an entirely different pace, one that I am still not used to.

If the 9.0 on March 11th can be likened to a bad dream, the 7.1 of April 11th was more like a bad joke.  According to the news, there have been 400 aftershocks of magnitude 5.0 and above throughout the past month.

On Friday afternoon I am sitting in yet another stopped train in Ikebukuro station.  I look out the window of the car towards a Kiosk, where the cover of a daily tabloid paper falls over the news rack.  "止まらない” it reads in large white characters printed over a darkened page.  "It never stops."  

Presumably, this refers to the 7.4 "aftershock" that took place the evening prior. I feel guilty for relating to the headline. Surely, it is not meant for me.  It must refer to the situation up north, where countless people have lost their homes and their loved ones.  Here in Tokyo, we have merely lost our minds.

止まらない。

Which brings me to the cherry blossoms.  In the week after the first quake and tsunami, a friend told me, half-joking, that we really don`t need to see the cherry blossoms bloom and fall this year.  We get it.  Life is impermanent.  We don't need to be reminded yet again.

But maybe we do.

The cherry blossoms teach us that nothing lasts forever, still this concept is not necessarily limited to beauty. Pain and anxiety cannot possibly endure forever either. Rebirth and recovery are just as inevitable.  

That said, the cherry blossoms may be just what we need right now.

With so much in mind, I am pleased to say that I have made my very second ever youtube video.  It was so exciting to create that I even forgot to worry about the aftershocks for a little while.  I hope you like it too!

 

On Pandas

So last Friday, I am sitting in a sauna with a bunch of naked Japanese women (I wonder how many hits those past three words will get me...), watching a TV that`s perched behind a glass wall.  It is set to one channel only, not that it makes a difference.  The screen reflects the usual expanse of wrecked coastlines, making it harder and harder to believe that seaside villages once stood there.

A spa employee comes in to change the towels, to see us all somberly watching the TV, probably sweating more than usual.

"So," the employee detracts our attention, "the pandas will debut at Ueno Zoo today!"

"Really?" My face lights up.  I had totally forgotten about the pandas. 

It has been three dark panda-less years since the last giant panda living in Ueno Zoo died in April of 2008.  Since then, the process of acquiring new pandas has been very trying, which can largely be attributed to Japan and China's supreme talent for pissing each other off.

Still all this had begun looking up back in late February, when two new pandas flew into Narita on a black and white panda themed jet.  After the Japanese changed the Panda's Chinese names from "Bili and Xiannu" to (the perhaps more chinese-sounding?) "Shin Shin and Li Li," the two new pandas were scheduled to debut in Ueno Zoo on Tuesday March 22nd.  

This obviously did not happen.  Aftershocks kept the zoo closed for weeks.  Until last Friday, when the decision was made to reopen again.  

Sitting in the sauna that day, the newscast behind the glass does eventually turn to coverage of the panda survivors, who, as it turns out, also lived through the catastrophic 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China.  And the pandas are hardly the only survivors at the zoo that day, as busloads of children from evacuation centers up north cheerfully tell members of the press that they have never seen giant pandas before and cannot wait to see them.

Luckily for me, the healing power of the panda is not limited to children.

Some days later, namely yesterday, I have assembled my crew and we head out to Ueno.  Now we expect it to be crowded, but what we see when we get there is beyond anything we could have imagined.  

Outside the zoo, there is a roped off maze of a line.  It is not the line to buy tickets.  Rather, it is the line to get on the line to buy tickets.  Then, once we are actually in the zoo, there is another line that stretches back past the elephants and monkeys before finally winding into the Panda house. 

At first, the very presence of all these lines reminds me of all the sad, hopeless queues of people I witnessed at every bus stop I passed on my long walk home the night of the earthquake.  

I remember wishing that somebody would just tell all those people that their bus was not coming.  In retrospect, however, maybe they already knew. Helplessly stranded, perhaps all those people just queued up around the city blocks together because they didn't want to be alone.

Back to the zoo, the odd thing is that I do not mind these lines at all.  I am actually enjoying myself.  I have not been surrounded by so many light-hearted, excited people since before the earthquake, and I am grateful for their close physical presence, even if it happens to take the form of a ridiculously long line. And at least the line is moving forward steadily.  Plus, my husband is kindly carrying all of my bags, which lightens my mood a lot and frees my hands to take pictures.

Then finally, at the end of an odyssey, we behold our lazy heros.  One of whom is pictured below, sleeping.

What is it about this fuzzy lump of black and white fluff that has managed to lift people`s spirits so much?  

I don't know.  I don't need to know.  I don't even care.  

All I know is that with Disneyland liquified, and Tokyo`s dumbass mayor trying to ban the seasonal cherry blossom parties, these pandas may really be our only hope for a collective smile.

On Strength

This weekend, TBS (tokyo broadcasting station) has been airing a special live broadcast from its headquarters in Akasaka, called the "Kizuna Project."

"Kizuna" means connectedness or bond.  In this context it expresses the idea that everyone is connected.  It`s a hopeful message to those who have lost everything to the earthquake/tsunami, that they are not alone right now. 

The Kizuna project appears to be organized by TBS, its national affiliates and radio stations, plus a veritable truckload of A-list celebrities.  It is a crowded, star-studded event, where a mass of citizens stands queued up in an orderly fashion not to buy water or food this time, but to donate money.  At the receiving end of the line, renown actors, models, comedians, musicians and athletes exchange greetings and shake hands with fans, who in turn contribute  to the donation box. 

The video I have posted below features the Japanese calligraphy prodigy who was commissioned to paint the character "kizuna" on a giant scroll to mark the event.  I think that this segment was especially worthy of the effort I made to translate it for an English speaking audience.

I apologize for the quality of this video, as it was taken with my cell phone pointed at my tv screen. This is also my first try at inserting subtitles into a video file. 

That said, please, please watch!!

 

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.