Earthquake in Sendai [Essay]

I’ve been warned since I came to Japan two and a half years ago that, any day now, the ‘big one’ would be coming. In North Carolina, where I’d lived since I was born, we have no earthquakes. The idea of the earth moving underneath me was not really something I could comprehend. But after the first two or three small quakes here, the events became commonplace, or at most a game. I’d hop online after each one, checking to see if my friends in Tokyo felt the same quake, or doing a larger search to find other English-speakers in the country.

Even last Wednesday, when we were hit with a large quake, things were normal. Power never goes out in Japan, while it seemed that after every big storm in North Carolina we’d lose power for hours at the least. With no larger consequences, the earthquake was just a conversation topic for my English classes. Each student told stories about the earthquakes they’d been in over the years. None spoke of fear, and none spoke about food shortages. Maybe they’d have no gas for a day or two, but no one considered earthquakes too much to worry about.

As I got home from my classes on Friday the eleventh, I settled in for a quiet afternoon playing on the computer before the gyu-don dinner I planned to make for my roommate and myself once she got home from school. The quake from two days earlier was almost forgotten, and life, as it had never deviated from normal, was still trucking on as it had since I flew halfway around to world.

But there was something disturbing in the first tremors in the afternoon. I believe I was sitting on my couch, but all I can really remember is that I immediately knew something was different. The entire apartment seemed to jump and slide. I had trouble moving, but as quickly as I could I darted under the flimsy kitchen table and hoped it would end quickly, even as I knew it wouldn’t.

The shaking got worse, and I grabbed a leg of the table to keep it in place, half-remembering that that’s what I was supposed to do and half just trying to stay safe. My heart was pounding, and it was as I could see all the furniture in the kitchen moving and the entire building rumbling around me that I think I grasped that not only was this the biggest earthquake I’d ever felt, but that I was really and honestly and for the first time scared.

And I knew that any second the metal rack on top of which was precariously perched my ancient microwave would fall, scattering debris around my kitchen. I stayed rooted to my hiding place, knowing that if the quake were strong enough, my apartment building could collapse, but also knowing that if I wasnt under the table when the rack fell that I could be knocked unconscious. The last thing I needed was to be unconscious, so I stayed in my hiding place as the shaking continued to grow more violent.

I thought about a lot of things: about my roommate, who was on the other side of the city. About my parents, on the other side of the world. About my life, which was about to be thrown into utter turmoil, the extent of which I couldn’t tell, and wouldn’t have any idea until the infernal shaking would finally stop. This was when the rack fell, and whatever was on it hit the floor and slid towards me, the microwave hitting somewhere with a large crash.

This then focused my mind on the apartment building, which was getting old, and my roommate’s fears that it would collapse under the stress of an earthquake. I knew that if I wanted to get out, I could either go now, when there was little risk of being hit by debris, which was mostly already on the floor, or wait until the shaking stopped, and risk the building falling on me. I decided in a moment that I had to go.

The next hour is a complete blur. I remember a neighbor approaching me and asking me if I’d seen his cat. I remember running back inside the apartment for my phone and trying to send out a few desperate messages to my parents and then to my roommate, first to assure them I was ok and then to make sure they were. I also remember trying to clean up the apartment as I hadn’t heard from my roommate and could only assume the worst: that her school had collapsed, or at the very least that the phone lines were damaged and I wouldn’t hear from her for hours.

The next several hours are no more solid in my memory either. I travelled downtown to try to find my roommate, encountering a freak blizzard and a swarm of people including two foreigners like me who told me that downtown ‘wasn’t safe,’ and they were going to the river. It was around this time that I learned there had been a tsunami, and I realized that people at the coast would be worse off than me. But my cell phone service was spotty at best, and my battery was dying, and no one seemed to know any more than I did about what was happening.

It was days before I stopped being scared. I heard my roommate, who returned home late that night and huddled with me for comfort and warmth. In the days that followed, I tried to make good decisions. The one thing I knew I wanted was not to be governed by fear. I didn’t want to run from my home because I was afraid of what had happened or worried about the future. I also didn’t want to stay because I was too scared to act. I still don’t know if everything or anything I’ve done has been right, but at least I don’t feel scared anymore. As I stand in a line for a grocery store, one week after the quake, along with hundreds of other people whose home is here, I feel a sense of community, and from that I am finding strength. Strength to keep going, no matter what, in the uncertain days that are ahead.

Submitted by: Gregory Harbin
Taihaku-ku, Sendai, Japan