The Tohoku Earthquake: My Day (Part 1)

It was Friday afternoon.  There was no 6th period on Friday, so students were already swelling the corridors, bustling around and cleaning (or pretending to clean).  It was, of course, just like every other Friday.  There was a bustling, cheerful air about the place, with everyone looking forward to the weekend.  I'd made plans to meet up with my friends to go to the Plum Blossom Festival in Mito that weekend.

I was in the staff room, helping the students stationed there to clean up.  A couple of students were pulling the vacuum cleaner around while I would pull out the chairs from under the staff tables so they can sweep under them.  Then I heard a word: jishin.  Earthquake.

I looked around.  The curriculum coordinator teacher, Mr. Ogawa, was pointing at one of the telephones that stood on a plastic stand.  It was indeed shuddering.  It wasn't a big deal for the first few seconds we stopped to pay attention.  Earthquakes are a part of life in Japan.  But I'll admit that this was the first one I'd felt during school, for I was feeling it now, under my feet, and getting stronger.  It was only when another teacher ordered everyone to duck under a desk did I register, numbly, that this was serious.

I cannot describe to you what it felt like.  The whole building felt as if it had snapped from it's foundations and was sliding around on marbles, back and forth, back and forth, for the longest two minutes of my life.  It's not even so much the earthquake itself so much as what it does to you: it makes you feel completely disconnected from anything solid.  You ever had those nasty, plunging sensations in your chest, when you feel panic, real, wild panic set in?  Imagine that feeling, continuously, for two minutes.

But there was the added effect that, even with my complete lack of experience, I knew that I was in the middle of one of Japan's biggest Earthquakes.  I knew there and then that this would be international news.  And I was in the middle of it, right now.  It wasn't a thrill: thrills are positive feelings.  Thrills make you feel powerful and pumped up.  This was an anti-thrill: sure, my heart raced and I felt very aware of myself and my surroundings, but I felt weak, useless, tiny and insignificant up against nature at her most cruel.  I was stuck in the middle of something big, and there was nothing - nothing - I could do but hold on.

This was, as best as I can put into words, how I felt.  But this is all analysis and after-the-fact.  At the time, all these feelings clashed simultaneously, continuously over those long, two minutes, compressing into a dull roar in my ears.

Then, slowly, the shaking tapered away.  I couldn't be sure if the shaking truly stopped, because my hands hadn't.  We waited.  There's no reason or rhyme to earthquakes, and another one may well have been on it's way.  But it didn't.  We'd gained respite at last, or at least, a chance to try - and fail - to comprehend what had just happened.  Teachers and students alike stared at each other in silence.  One teacher regained enough sense to grab the TV remote and switch on the staff room TV.

Newscasters in hard hats.  Studios in a frenzy.  Prefecture after prefecture scrolling by with levels of earthquake strength.  And in the corner, a map of Japan, nearly the entire coast surrounded by an angry red line as if the entire country were under quarantine.  Tsunami Warning.  Head to higher ground.