A Month and A Day; The time of Upheaval

“Light up, light up,
As if you have a choice,
Even if you can not hear my voice,
I'll be right beside you dear,
Louder, louder
And we'll run for our lives,
I can hardly speak, I understand,
Why you can't raise your voice to say..." ~Snow Patrol, Run

Boy, this is going to be a hard one to blog about. On Friday, March 11th, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan.

Urged by my 'Units' I began a blog on my laptop about my feelings, what happened, how things were, and frankly, I had to stop. I passed a point were I could only take so much or write about so much. I wanted, and kept meaning to, update this, because getting what I had stopped up out was important and healthy. But for the longest time I couldn't. So many days this past month, I have done everything and anything to not think about the devastation a mere 200 miles south of me. Even after gentle prods from my family, I couldn't muster the energy needed for this update. Finally, I gave myself an ultimatum, I had to update when the last bit of snow in front of my house melted. I had the barest, most pathetic mound (mound might even be too grand a word) lingering on the ground last night. This morning, as I locked my door, I turned to the spot and saw it was now only a damp patch of crushed grass. The time had come.


Thursday (the 10th) night my cross broke. The four-way metal my grandma had given me before I left for Japan had separated from the chain and popped right off. I never take my metal off. Ever. It’s my worry-stone, my good-luck charm, my link to a person who loves me completely and without judgment. It's a powerful item to me, not because it was a cross, but because it was gift. The fact that it broke did not bode well for my superstitious nature and when it broke, I automatically thought of my grandma at home. She is very, very ill and for a heartbeat or two, I panicked. I called my mother and to my relief, all was well on the home front. Satisfied, I set the cross beside my bed, promised to hook it back onto the chain in the morning, and went to sleep.

I forgot to fix it in the morning. I wore an empty chain to work. I noticed it was missing during my second class. I even showed it to my students, although most of the girls had already noticed. I felt off, as I always do when I misplace any of my five stable jewelry items.
These are the five items, all of them mean something special to me, and I feel just plain weird not wearing any of them.

But as there was nothing I could do, I shrugged it off and continued my day. Last class was with my first years. Class 1-3.

I distinctly remember looking at the clock and thinking 'OH! Its 2:45! Only five more minutes.' Five long minutes before this lesson is over, my day is done, and my weekend begins. My Friday, last class, mental pep talk. No matter how much I love my job, when its Friday, baby, its Friday.

2:46. I was talking when it happened. The first year students of class three all had their English textbooks opened to page 95. It was the normal ‘read and repeat’ that I do in every junior high school classroom. Today I was ‘Ms. Green’ from the prepared conversation. I had just said the line, “Yes, I did. I had a nice time.” I was waiting for the students to repeat after, when the murmuring started.


I looked at my co-teacher in confusion, why weren’t they repeating? And that's when the screaming started, and finally, finally I began to register what everyone else was feeling. The ground was lurching; literally rolling and shaking beneath my feet. I managed to pick out the word the kids were screaming. Jishin. Earthquake. A word I don't think I will ever forget.

It lasted forever. I was near the windows, in hindsight, not the best place to be, but it was my first big earthquake—I am not trained nor used to emergency procedures involving moving ground. Give me a tornado to tangle with, and you got a prepared girl, but earthquakes- completely out of my jurisdiction. Not that I could have really run anyway.

There are vivid parts that stand out. I remember the windows clearly because the sun was shining. It was shining. I think a part of my brain didn’t, couldn't register that something bad was happening because the sunlight was sparkling through the glass. I suppose I thought all bad earthquakes called for dark, cloudy days. Mood appropriate weather. But it was sunny and rather beautiful. A day that promises spring is coming.

I also remember the fish tank. Class 1-3 is the only class in the school that has something like a pet in it. There were two large fish (don’t ask me as I couldn’t tell you what they are, that is E’s forte not mine) and the water was going all over the place. I reached out a hand to try and keep it from falling. I think I might have even cried out ‘Save the Fish’. It was intensely surreal.

Something I didn’t expect either was the light-headedness. I felt faint and distinctly….odd. Like my head wasn't quite attached to my body. I talked to other people and they also felt that sensation.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. It had lasted for two minutes, which doesn't sound long, but for earthquakes, thats an eternity. My poor friend up on higher ground felt it longer and more intensely than I did. We had a couple of moments of the kids chattering and laughing then the bell rang. Walking down the hall, I passed a room with a teacher and all the students surrounding it. I kept going. I went down the stairs to the teacher’s office. They had the TV on. A Tsunami was bearing down on the coast.
The office ladies were gasping. This is what I saw. It was live feed for me, and boy was it surreal. I will kept using that word over and over and over again, because that is how I felt that day. Even now, I look at the pictures and read the stories and its just beyond comphernsion, the devastation. This is my picture of the TV in the teachers office. Live feed.


All the teachers were riveted. In fact, the Vice Principal had to gently scold them. “All the teachers are here, who is with the students?” That was when we felt an aftershock. We all monitored the tall office plants to see when they would start swaying.

The teachers left the office to corral the kids into the gym. The office ladies and myself continued to watch the TV. We were shocked as cars were actually driving along side of the tsunami. They were driving so slow, just so slow, and they couldn't see it coming, or they didn't realize how bad it was. The office ladies and I were yelling at TV, telling the people to run. That is about when the sirens began in Mori. It was our tsunami sirens.

I watched the tsunami hit on TV and it really didn't register it would be coming to Mori. I will never forget looking out of the office and seeing the ocean. All of the boats along the bay were at sea. It was a sea of white. If sailors have warning, they get in their boats and they take them out to sea. Boats in a tsunami won't do this. This image is from Ponyo, a Studio Ghibli movie. I highly recommend watching it. I have been to the location where this was inspired, Tomo No Ura. This is Ponyo's version of boats in a tsunami.

In reality, boats in a tsunami become weapons, crashing into houses, buildings, and anything in their path. By taking them out to sea, the fisherman ride the wave, for the most part, and save both the boat and anything the boat would have destroyed. For the people on the coastal regions of Japan, fishing is more than a way to provide for their family, its apart of the Japanese culture and heritage. The boats that were saved also came in handy after the tsunami. Photo from MSN.

Now this, Ponyo nailed.


My hours are 8:15 to 4:00. That last hour passed in the blink of an eye. I called my friend to see if she was ok. I left messages on my mom's voicemail. At the time, I didn't think it was going to be the biggest disaster Japan has faced since WWII. I would have woken her up if I had known. Because of the warnings, all the buses were canceled and the children stayed in the gym. Our school was the evacuation location for tsunamis anyway, so the kids just stayed. And waited. We all waited. When the tsunami didn't come at 4:30 and the forecast for Mori was only two meters, I went home. It was going to peak during the night anyway, and my house was only two minutes from the school. The insidious nature of a tsunami beyond the horrific initial strike, is that recedes and then comes back, pushing farther and then lingering.



Ok. So this is a map of Northern Japan. It cuts off the rest of Hokkaido, but thats ok. The orange arrow points to Mori. That is where yours truly lives. The pink arrow points to the epicenter of the quake, the coastline beside the pink arrow and further south were the hardest hit. Iwate was one of the 'Big Three' prefectures that got the brunt of the disaster. Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. The red arrow points to why I didn't get the brunt of the tsunami, by the lay of the land and Uchiura Bay.

Now the yellow arrow points to Hakodate. Hakodate acted as a wave break, and took much more damage than Mori did. In fact, Hokkaido's only death was in Hakodate. Now, Hakodate is my hangout. Its where my Starbucks (see other posts) is, its where I go shopping, its got the closest McDonalds. I know Hakodate. So when I was at home, watching the TV, trying to understand what the hell was happening, when I saw this, it really seemed to bring it all home for me. It was when I knew that this was real.

My Starbucks. My hangout. WHAM. See all of it, the footage on TV, the sirens, even the quake didn't feel real. I mean, the images on TV? I just had watched The Hereafter, (which depicts the 2004 Tsunami) I thought Deep Impact, I thought 2012. It looked like a movie. I swear it did. When I saw the live video from Hakodate, it meant that it wasn't a dream. It became real and I woke up.

I called my dad and stepmom first, they were working on the east coast and would be up before the rest of the family. I talked to them for about 30 minutes. The English version of information on the web and on the news at home was contrasting the little I managed to understand from the news. I can not tell you how horrible was it was to not understand-- I have never felt the language barrier more acutely.

I then called my mom. My aunt, who, had been watching this unfold on PBS since 2 AM (she is a bit of an insomniac) had called my mom and they were having a full blown panic. Would I have called them sooner had I known. Whereas my dad and my stepmom are cool under pressure, I have never heard my mom more distraught. International lines were down and the internet, (bless skype) was only way to contact home, which is great if you have internet, but my mother doesn't. She had been trying and trying and trying to call me. I am sure she thought I was dead. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for my family and friends for the short amount of time they didn't know if I was ok or not.

Family, friends; I love you all very much. I want to say thank you to all the people who called, emailed, facebooked, or stopped by and asked after me and looked after my family. Thank you so very much for doing that, if I could hug you all I would.

What was so weird about the disaster was how normal everything seemed in Mori. Despite the heartrending images on TV, life continued here. No one talked about the radiation, instead we talked about graduation, which happened on the 15th. March, which is already a time of change (end of our school year), was full of upheaval. It was perhaps the most stressful time of my life. Besides the concerns about the disaster, which stressed me, I also came to deeply resent the media firestorm that erupted and fanned my loved ones into a panic.

I also got new English teachers, new principals, new co-workers in the office. There were retirement ceremonies, welcome ceremonies and I had four different welcome and good bye parties to attend. In fact I have one next week to go to! Graduation saw many of my beloved third years gone. Like one who wrote this:


My grandmother flew to New York and had surgery, which ended up failing. I threw my back out. I went on a vacation I had planed for months, there were no refunds. Turned out to be a good stress reliever though. I will upload more pictures tomorrow of the crazy stressful, ultra hectic, and completely heart-breaking month. I will wrap up this update as it has gotten late and bed time beckons. Take care, all of you wanderers. Love you family and friends!
Best Wishes always from me.