The Quake

Two weeks and two days have passed since the massive quake and tsunami that have turned parts of Japan into a shadow of its former self. I've been meaning to write about my experience, but as I've been trying to put the whole thing to the back of my mind as well I've put it off a bit.

Anyway, for the quake itself I was at home in my apartment in Kichijoji in the west of Tokyo. I was sitting on my sofa, reading a book, when the shaking started. I'm sure like most people in Tokyo I wasn't overly concerned at first, as little tremors here are nothing out of the ordinary. But the shaking went on and it was soon apparent that this was something bigger than usual. To be on the safe side I took cover under the desk in the living room. I don't know how long the shaking went on, it could have been 3 minutes or it could have been 5 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The shaking just grew ever more intense and books and CDs started falling off the bookcase, the TV looked like it would also tumble onto the floor but managed to hang on. For a while I honestly thought that the building might come collapsing down around me. When the shaking finally halted I took a look round the apartment and a few plates and so on had fallen and broken, but there was no major damage.

It was a frightening experience and I decided to get out of the apartment for a while in case there were any aftershocks. I headed for the park up the road and on my way passed signs of complete normality. There was a team of construction workers sitting in the middle of the road happily drinking a cup of tea, people were still eating cakes and drinking coffee in the fancy patisserie up the road and when I got to the park people were jogging and walking their dogs as they always do. For a while I thought maybe this quake wasn't such a big deal and not one powerful enough to unsettle the Japanese. But then more people started to show up at the park who were obviously there for the same reason as myself. Some looked a little dazed as they clutched their mobile phones looking for more info on what had just happened, others had the type of emergency helmets that people have in their offices and homes here in case there is a quake.

Naturally, I too was glued to my iphone trying to get in touch with Saori (the network was down but we got in touch through email) and checking the latest news on the quake. At first the details were very sketchy but it seemed to be a magnitude 7 quake near Sendai. We now of course know that it was a M9 and caused a massive tsunami, but until that point I assumed the epicentre must have been near Tokyo as the shaking was so violent. While I was in the park there were several very large aftershocks. One in particular about 30 minutes after the initial quake was pretty severe. At first there was a rumbling, then the birds in the lake took flight, trees started shaking and the water in the lake started sloshing about.

I stayed in the park for about an hour and a half and when the aftershocks seemed to be dying down a bit, I went back to the apartment. On my way back I saw a few garden walls that had fallen over and a few tiles that had fallen off roofs but overall there was hardly any damage to be seen. When I was heading up the stairs I met my neigbour, a middle aged housewife, and she seemed fairly shaken. Just as in our apartment things had fallen off shelves and so on in hers too.

It was only when I got back and switched on the TV did I get a sense that Japan had just suffered a massive disaster. Initial images came of the tsunami and it seemed to have taken cars and even houses as it moved in from the shore. It looked worrying and there were obviously going to be casualties, but the scale of the disaster didn't really become apparent until many hours later.

I was very lucky that I had been at home at the time of the quake. I was able to sleep in my own bed that night (in reality I didn't get any sleep as there were constant aftershocks...) but an awful lot of people, including Saori, ended up spending the night in their offices as the rail system ground to a halt. You can see where Saori was in this YouTube clip. Saori works on the 24th floor of the building on the right. Apparently it was like being on a ship!

Anyway, that was my experience of the quake. Obviously many things have happened since then, but I'm going to save that for another post.