Today Japan was hit by the biggest earthquake it’s ever had. And I was there! (Thankfully not too close to the epicentre.) I was in Saitama, which is a prefecture just north of Tokyo. The earthquake we felt was magnitude 5.
I was teaching a class at the time. It started very small (small earthquakes are fairly common), but it got scary pretty quickly and we all dived under our desks. Some of the kids were scared, but actually a lot of them were laughing too, like it was a ride. Several of them shouted “New Zealand!” And several of them seemed to think the best way to ride out the quake was to comfort me! (I guess I must have looked pretty scared.)
After the tremors stopped, we evacuated into the schoolyard. I’ve seen them drill for this before and, as expected, they were very efficient. The principal told everyone that classes would resume for 6th period, but club activities were cancelled. He was starting to send students back inside and I headed in too since I was freezing (I’d had to rush out in only a cardigan and the outside temperature was about 6 degrees C).
And that was when the aftershock hit. It wasn’t as big, but this time I was stuck on my own so I was a bit panicky. But it didn’t last as long, and then it was straight back to the evacuation area for everyone. This time the principal just told everyone to go home.
In the meantime, our area had lost electricity. That was not a huge problem at school, although it meant we couldn’t easily find out what was going on since we couldn’t turn on a TV or a computer. But the worst effect of having no electricity was having no traffic lights. The streets were dangerous, but we had to send the kids home, so several teachers went out and directed traffic at the major intersections until the police turned up (an hour later).
Mobile services were down too (they’re still down at the time of writing), so no-one could call friends or family to check if they were OK.
And of course the trains had stopped. Most teachers and students live withing walking distance so they were fine, but I live further away. It takes me about 45 minutes by train to get home – too far to walk easily. Thankfully another teacher was driving in that direction and offered me a lift. She was pretty worried because her two daughters were stranded in Tokyo, where they go to school, and she had no way to contact them.
On the way home, we saw several fire trucks, ambulances and police cars. We also saw a fire in the distance. And we could still feel significant tremors when the car stopped. Six hours later, we’re still getting decent-sized tremors every 20 minutes or so.
She dropped me off at Omiya station, near my home. The station was packed, with lots of people sitting on the ground, preparing for a long wait. And since landline phone services were working, there were enormous queues for the public phones.
Now we’re just watching the TV to see what kind of damage the tsunami did, and watching the death toll climb. Surreal.
This is what the queue is like for the public phone when no-one can get home and no-one can use their mobile.
Going Native In Japan 