I won’t forget what happened that day.
I was 16, during a math class.
Someone suddenly said, “Earthquake?”, then horrible shake began. My seat was next to the window, so I thought it would break.
It was far beyond the imagination of how you feel when an earthquake occurs. Our teacher cried out to run under the desk, some stupid students raised excited voices, and I grasped the legs of the desk firmly otherwise it would fall over.
When shake stopped temporarily, the teachers jumped out of the staff room to the corridor and shouted to get out to the ground loudly. I saw a young male teacher run up to a student with a physical handicap and lifted her up in his arms.
We run out of a school building, with a great fear.
There were filled with people.
I vaguely remembered our school had over 4000 people and this crowd was just a part of them.
We were told to sit on the ground. I felt that the earthquake was still going on all the time. I did not know whether my body was trembling or the ground was swaying.
No one wouldn’t talk. We just waited and wanted to know what would be going on, how was magnitude, and where the epicenter was. At that time, our school prohibited students from bringing their mobile phones into school, so we couldn’t check any information on the internet.
But actually I violated that rule and held my phone in a pocket, so secretly checked it.
Until I confirmed the fact, I did not suspect believing that my place was close to the epicenter. On the other hand, this was not such an easy situation, I thought. And, well, that was exactly the case.
The epicenter was Tohoku, district far away from here.
Spring was still far away, while trembling in the cold under the eaves of the ground, I was staring at the mark of the radio wave staring. People in all Japan must have tried to call and send messages to their families and friends.
One of my friends asked me with paled face several times whether she could call her grandmother (she lived in Sendai), I kept telling her, no I cannot, we have no connection right now.
After a while, students was allowed to use their phones and we tried to call and send messages, only to find that we just got weak signal. We tried again and again, finally got some messages from our family.
My father sent me: I am safe. Since I got in touch with the whole family, do not make unnecessary contacts. Don’t worry.
I could come back home at 6:30 pm, and got to know what happened in Tohoku. I saw a tsunami pushing everything on TV and seeing people and cars being swept away and being swallowed. A reporter shouted to run and supplicated. He was crying. All I could do was just watching TV idly.