I know I will never forget it. It was a very warm, spring day. I was two weeks away from finishing my job at the pre-school and starting my job at the middle school. Lots of transition was going on and I was just beginning to feel like I was getting the hang of living in Japan. I had routines, friends, and I was even speaking and understanding Japanese enough to feel comfortable! I felt so optimistic about my future there and was hoping my upward trend would continue. It was the end of the school day, 2:45 pm, so all of our students were assembled into one room to wait for their parents. A few parents had already come to pick up their children, the other teacher's and I were waiting in the doorway to call for the child to gather their things as we saw their parents arrive. Dora the Explorer was playing on the tv. At 2:46 pm, in the middle of laughing with a co-teacher, we started to feel a little shaking. I remember thinking it felt larger than normal, but I told my co-worker it was no big deal anyways and just to wait it out. Of course, the students looked at us and we said it was okay, just stay sitting. There were no desks in that classroom and, luckily, the school was designed to always be close to the outdoors by being built in the midst of a bamboo forest. The shaking did not stop. Instead, it got increasingly more violent to the point that we decided it was safer to not be in our school anymore. The eraser board was slamming back and forth against the wall, a teacher ran to make sure the tv didn't fall on any students, and we scooped up children too scared to walk as we made our way to the playground.
Watching the building sway was absolutely surreal. I felt like my mind was videotaping it all the while thinking, "no way is this real." Everything shook. Even after the earthquake itself finished, everything continued to shake. I can remember thinking the Earth was furious with us for some reason. It actually felt like that Earth was so angry it shook and afterwards, it trembled. I know that a lot of people may not think this experience was traumatizing for me or maybe think it should not have been traumatizing, but I look back and still know it was horrible. Who do you turn to after something like that?
There are many things about that day I will never forget. Being one of the very few foreigners in my town never bothered me until the earthquake. I felt so lost and isolated, unable to understand most of the public messages being blared every few minutes throughout the town. I heard rumors of tsunami's but it wasn't until I went to a friend's apartment and saw live footage of the tsunami sweeping across Northeastern Japan that I understood exactly what everyone was talking about. I had no idea there was also a tsunami miles away from where I lived. While many seemed calm, others just looked as if they were waiting for something even worse to happen. I was so thankful for at least one friend who kept me company while aftershocks made sure the night was never still for more than a few minutes. Every foreigner I knew was making plans to go back home. If they weren't making plans to move, they were making plans to at least get as far south as they could. Looking back, I am glad I didn't let my emotions take over completely. If that had been the case, I would have found a flight home within a week or taken an offer to get on a government flight.
The entire experience was shocking. There is no other word for it. Whether anyone knew it or not, I had never felt like Japan was a home for me and this event put me over the edge of feeling like my time in Japan was finished. For a few weeks after the earthquake I was looking for reasons to either stay or leave. One week I would be convinced I should stay and then the next week I would think it was a good time to leave. After a series of unfortunate events involving someone I thought I could rely on turning on me, my bike getting stolen, and the chance that I'd have to move apartments presenting itself, I decided my time in Japan had indeed come to an end.
In the past I have relied quite heavily on intuition and how I feel about the future help me make decisions. Experiencing this disaster taught me that I could never predict what will happen and my emotions are a terrible indicator of anything to come. There are times intuition helps, but those times are usually laced with solid logic to back up that "feeling" one has. I thought my life was going awesome, so much better than the year before. I thought everything was finally working out, I was finally progressing and my plans would work. And then the Earth literally shifted.
I got angry for awhile. I felt like life was being so unfair. Then I started my new job at the middle school and found out some of the orphans from the tsunami were new students. I believe we had one student whose family moved to our town to start over and ove student was sent there with no family. I guess life had not been that unfair to me, I was still alive and my family was very safe back in America.
One thing I noticed about the Japanese throughout the entire crisis was the taboo nature of discussing your feelings. Everyone knew this disaster was horrible and stress expressed itself in physical ways, especially in children, but no one talked about how devastating it made them feel. I suppose feelings are irrelevant in situations like this, but I am sure this society norm of silence being forced on some traumatized children did not help their recovery. It was strange to me that it was almost as if the earthquake had never happened...except for the occasional earthquake alarm (indicating an approaching aftershock), helmets handed out for safety drills, and inspections of new cracks in the school building. I do remember a comical happening starting to become routine: I would be in the school office, which was a big room where all the teachers did lesson plans and other work, and suddenly hear an alarm screeching from someone's cell phone. Then, many Japanese teachers would stand up and go stand near the doorway leading outside or just look as if they were bracing themselves. The first time it happened I had no idea what was going on and if I was supposed to go somewhere or not. It was then explained to me that screeching was an earthquake alarm. It couldn't tell us how strong the quake would be, but it could tell us one had just happened close enough that we could expect to feel it. I started to hate that screeching sound and of course, heard it everywhere from then on.
There are so many things I could write about remembering March 11, 2011 at 2:46 pm and beyond. I know I had a great experience compared to so many who lived farther North. If you watch anything about what happened, this documentary is narrated by children. There is no better perspective to understand it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_AxnoNrr_8&context=C3043f09ADOEgsToPDskLs7TnOWlrtO6A6Hjz0VQJW
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