It was 2 a.m. on a quiet, normal Friday.
I was up later than usual and decided to check news on the internet one more time before I went to bed. Then I saw it – breaking news, a huge earthquake hit Miyagi prefecture. At that point, it was magnitude 7.9. Later, it was upgraded to 9.0.
I’m from Niigata prefecture; it’s in the north, but the opposite side, facing the Sea of Japan. However, my parents told me a few days before the earthquake that they would be travelling around the area hit by the earthquake, and my brother lives in Tokyo. And my uncle, aunt and cousin live in Miyagi.
I called and e-mailed them, but the calls didn’t go through and my inbox said “no new messages.”
I kept calling and checking the news, not knowing what else to do. I went on Facebook. There were already several posts about the quake. One of my friends in Japan, seeing me panic and desperate for information, sent me the link to the Japanese live news.
Knowing I’ve been trying to get a hold of my family since the news, he added, “I’m not sure if you should watch this right now.”
As I clicked the link, I understood what he meant.
Miyagi seems far enough from my hometown, about 260 kilometres away.
Still, as soon as I saw the news, my first thoughts were of my immediate family. Then, my uncle and his family came to my mind.
I’m not in constant touch with them. We see each other twice a year, in summer and around the new year when all of my family and relatives gather for a festive dinner together. And I haven’t seen them in two years. Still, I fill them in with my news and they fill me in with theirs whenever we see each other. My cousin would be in high school by now.
They moved to Sendai city after my uncle was transferred there a few years ago. They live in a two-storey house on a narrow street. Their neighbourhood reminds me of my hometown a little.
As far as I remember, they live in a centre of the city, not near the ocean.
***
Growing up in Japan, the possibility of an earthquake was always somewhere on my mind. I felt tremors when I was back there in the fall. I’ve also experienced a few big ones before. Earthquakes were something I’m scared of, but prepared for.
But an earthquake with tsunamis seemed something completely different. I saw footage after footage of houses and cars being swept away, houses shattered into pieces, cars dropped on top of houses, waves swallowing cities and leaving them to burn. Aftershocks never seemed to end. A train went missing; almost a thousand people went missing from a city where the population was only 2,000. Several cities just disappeared from a map overnight.
The impossible was happening while I sat in my room thousands of miles away, watching the news, still unable to reach any of my family.
***
On Friday afternoon, I finally talked to my parents on the phone. They changed plans at the last minute and were travelling the south instead.
I was too happy to be mad at them for not telling me about the change earlier.
But when I talked to my mom, her voice was trembling. She said she still couldn’t get a hold of my brother and our uncle and his family. Later, my brother sent her a text that said he’s okay, but the phone lines were down. In Tokyo, approximately 300 kilometres away from Miyagi, the subway wasn’t working; windows shattered into pieces, ceilings crashed on the floor and cracks were left on the walls. And late in the day, we still haven’t been able to reach our uncle.
I knew, at this point, the entire country is shaking.
***
Since the quake, I’ve been glued to news. I even brought my computer to a bed with me and left it on while trying to sleep. I was almost obsessed; if something was happening, I had to know as soon as it happened.
I was basically watching the Japanese live news. It had tsunami warnings always on the screen and emergency aftershocks alerts as soon as they occur, or other alerts such as scheduled blackouts, public transportation cancellations and nuclear plant explosions. It seemed to satisfy my obsession.
It also gave me comfort somehow.
It seems like one of the few things I can do here in Canada – since I could not be with them, fighting or suffering together.
So I kept it on.
But I occasionally switched to other media outlets like CNN. I was afraid of missing something important that Japanese news wouldn’t tell.
I was right since they were telling stories I wouldn’t see on Japanese news. And I was wrong since it wasn’t something I would regret missing.
CNN seemed too dramatic and overwhelming, with all the repeating images of tsunamis and earthquake and the way the coverage at the nuclear plants stoked fears of catastrophe.
The images from the plants weren’t new, yet watching the CNN coverage upset me and gave me chills in the way the Japanese news didn’t.
***
The first time I went out after the quake, it felt weird.
It was Sunday afternoon. I was sitting at the Second Cup, waiting for my friend to arrive. People were chatting, reading and working on their computers. It seemed like just a normal Sunday afternoon, like nothing was happening.
Then my friend showed up. She’s also from Japan. We don’t have much of a huge culture in Japan, but as soon as we saw each other, we hugged. And it just felt right.
When I decided to write this story, I got this question: “Japan is handling the situation very calmly, no robbery, no panicking. How do people in Japan deal with a crisis like this?”
That caught me by surprise, since I can’t imagine Japan handling the situation any other way. Maybe, it’s a cultural thing to be more polite and respectful. Maybe it’s because we are so prepared for earthquakes. They both made sense but neither seemed quite right to me.
The hug was maybe a better answer. It made me think that in situations like this, we find comfort by comforting someone else.
As much as the hug was meant to comfort her, it comforted me, too.
***
A week has passed since the quake and my family still hasn’t heard from my uncle and his family. It has been the longest week of my life. There wasn’t much I could do but keep up with the news and wait for a call. I couldn’t hang out with friends as I normally would. Going out for a few drinks seemed inappropriate. Laughing with friends didn’t seem right. Having fun was the last thing on my mind.
It was St. Patrick’s Day that I finally got a message from my mom about my uncle and his family – they were okay, living in an emergency shelter. I’m still not sure about the details and don’t know why it took us so long to find out.
But it really doesn’t matter. I now officially love St. Patrick’s Day.
***
I met up with another friend from Japan last Friday. We’ve been in touch on Facebook, texts and emails but I hadn’t seen her since the quake.
I was sitting on the bus when she came on, waving and smiling. She’s getting married this summer and told me she finally decided on a dress. She also told me she had her hair cut the day before and how she thinks it’s too short now. We talked about anything but the quake.
Then we fell into silence, not looking at each other anymore. We both knew what we were thinking, but the words just didn’t come out.
She was the one who broke the silence. She said, “one second, I was thinking like ‘what I’m gonna cook for supper,’ and then the next second it pops up on my mind and makes me question if we can get back to normal when they are suffering in Japan.”
And I just nodded.
***
It’s the second week since the quake. Getting back to normal seems like one of the hardest thing to do.
But I’m still doing my daily social network sites rounds, finding it hard to start and end a day without getting any information from my friends in Japan.
One of my friends had posted footage from Japanese TV news. An old man and his family had been rescued from his collapsed home a few days after the quake.
He looks old enough to be my grandpa, to be someone who had survived the Second World War. In turns out he was also a survivor of a tsunami that hit Japan after a massive 1960 quake in Chile
As he came out of the house, he had a smile on his face. “I’m alright. I’ve experienced Chile tsunami.”
“We’ll rebuild Japan this time again.”
Maiko Tanabe is a graduate of the journalism program at St. Thomas. She was the international editor of The Aquinian in 2009-10.
