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.

Flu season

 It seems a bit backward to talk about something very specific about winter-time in Japan without really mentioning the season before.  But trust me, I could be here forever and a day talking about Japan's relationship with the weather and the changing seasons (even now I'm bursting to talk about the legendary 'Japan Has Four Seasons' slogan), and besides, winter ain't going nowhere for the time being.

No, in Japan it is now 'flu season'.  I remember this period all too well last year.  The second one student slouches off to the nurses office and shows the signs of インフルエンザ (Influenza, so terrifying it is referred to in full name here, like Voldemort, only the other way around) then the school launches into quarantine/siege mode.  Tables with hand sanitiser sprout up on every corner like some kind of Red-Light District for hygiene, the windows are bolted shut, and a Whiteboard Memorial chart tallying the fallen students goes up under the school schedule.  It's a teacher's grim duty to erase a '2' and write a '3' sometimes, as though sending a telegram to the parents.  Then, of course, sanitise their hands after.  Dirty, dirty whiteboard marker.

 I can't speak for other schools, but in our staff room, stoves are wheeled in.  You see, Japan doesn't do radiators.  If there was anything I could introduce to Japan, it would be a toss-up between radiators and Dandelion and Burdock.  But stoves are the next best thing.  They do the job reasonably well, except they can often befoul the staff room with the stench of oil (this includes classrooms too).  This, however, I can deal with.  What I find hard to abide is how the tops of our stoves have hulking great bowls of water boiling away on top of them.  This, combined with the lack of air-circulation due to everything being shut, means that some 30-plus adults sit in a stew of each others exhalations for several hours each day, which is a recipe for catching the flu if ever there was one.  That, and the humidity makes me feel oddly giddy.  Add to this the tea-lady's well intentioned serving up of hot lemon, and I even I wonder if I'm already ill.

I don't mean to come across as though I know better by default, but I have to admit I find the 'flu season' in Japan fascinating, not just in how it copes with it, but how it prevents it.  Everywhere you look, for kids and adults alike, are signs encouraging you to wash your hands, gargle and mask up (see above).  No doubt, Japan works harder than any other nation to avoid falling ill, and yet just as many students seem to tally up on the flu board as I recall during my own school days, if not more so.  Make of that what you will.