The Tohoku Earthquake: My Day (Part 3)

When I got back to my apartment, I was relieved to see that everything vital was still in tact.  True, there was a broken mug here and and some dents in the furniture there, but these are mendable, replaceable things - it chilled me to think that even at that moment, not too far away, people where losing things that could be neither mended nor replaced.

That being said, from my own personal viewpoint, it was still creepy to see my apartment ever so slightly shuffled around.  Imagine if you came back to your home: which would disturb you more, to see the whole place upturned, or just a few things moved around?  To have your own personal space disturbed by nature itself was a weird feeling.

Mercifully, my power was working, and I immediately fired up my laptop.  While I waited, I switched on the TV and tried my phone again.  Now I had access to media, I needed to feel as connected as possible to what had happened.  I still didn't completely understand what had happened.  I still couldn't get through to my family on the phone, and the Internet was temperamental, but it was better than nothing, and again I had to remind myself that there were bigger problems unfolding elsewhere.  I watched NHK with numb horror as fires erupted seemingly from the middle of a newly-claimed ocean, and entire towns were being swept away.  Even after the main event of the Earthquake, the facts were still blurred, but seemed to be escalating in scale.  It had been upgraded to a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the largest Japan has ever experienced, and the tsunami warnings were growing ever higher.

Finally, I got through to my family, who were understandably relieved and tearful.  I quickly relayed what I knew to them: how far I was from Sendai, how far inland I was...in hindsight, it seemed unbelievable to even think a tsunami would reach this deep into the Kanto Plain, but it was a day that anything seemed possible.  Even in the back of my mind, I was preparing to evacuate to the nearby hills should the worst come to pass.

The aftershocks never stopped, and they were muscular enough to be considered standalone quakes in their own right.  I hadn't showered.  I hadn't changed out of my work clothes.  I hadn't eaten.  I could only stay glued to my screens and try to absorb what was going on.  I still didn't truly believe it: were entire homes really being pushed aside by a towering tsunami?  Was that ever-growing death toll true?  It seemed all the more surreal to think that this was all happening so close to where I was now, which by comparison seemed so peaceful.  I'd pulled myself away from my apartment long enough to head to the supermarket to buy provisions for the shortages I knew were coming.  It was all so quiet, so...normal.  Music still played in the shops.  The shelves were still, at that point, full.  The cashier greeted me as always.  Only the occasional shudder underfoot seemed to tie my experience to the worst-affected.

As the night wore on, I knew I'd have to turn in for the night.  I felt that horrible sense of uselessness creep up on me again.  How could I even think of something as comfortable and normal as sleep at a time like this?  But I could barely keep my eyes open by 1am.  I crawled into bed, and with the TV still struggling to keep up with the unfolding tragedy and the never-ending quakes, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

And that was my day.  That, of course, was barely the beginning.  But that's for another time.