Quake in Nagoya [Essay]
1 Apr
I’d planned to meet a foreign refugee living in Nagoya because I wanted to spend the afternoon photographing him for a project I’m working on. We arranged to meet at 2.45 p.m. at Exit 1 of Takaoka station. I got there a couple of minutes early.
I walked up the steps and out into the open, checked my phone for any messages and saw that he was going to be a few minutes late. So I stood, waiting on the corner with nothing much to do but play around with my camera.
It was then that I suddenly felt dizzy. I immediately grabbed hold of a nearby signpost just in case I fainted, but quickly realised that it was the ground moving up and down. I heard a security guard shout at construction workers to get of some scaffolding and I looked up to see office workers peering out of windows to see how bad the earthquake was or was going to get.
My immediate thought was the central Japan had been hit, probably somewhere in the mountains. Takayama perhaps. So I checked Twitter and read a tweet from a Tokyo-based friend saying that the capital had been hit by a ‘big one’. I realised then that it was more than just an ordinary quake. I stood there, the ground still shaking, checking Twitter for updates and keeping my eye on the construction crane to my right and the Nagoya Highway directly in front and 15 metres or so above. A woman walked passed in a hurry seemingly oblivious to what was happening.
5 minutes later, after it had stopped, my friend arrived by car and we headed to his office. We checked the internet and read about the tsunami warnings. When the first strong aftershock hit everything started swaying again so we all went outside.
Back inside one friend made a call on her mobile to check the extent of the damage. I could tell from her expression that it was no ordinary quake, even for Japan, but didn’t realise how serious it really was until I got home.
Submitted by: Sean Breslin, Aichi