March 11. The anniversary of Japan's triple disaster earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. I wanted to publish this somewhere besides Facebook. Here's my account of the day the earth shook.
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I almost felt like an extra in the mass exodus scene of War of the Worlds. Except that I was in the midst of a triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—that would send all of Japan, no, the world, reeling.
There were people crowding the sidewalks, many walking away—from what, I can’t say, and I had little confidence they would make it to their final destinations anyway, what with buses as packed as they were and the trains not running.
Some were standing around desperately trying to get their cell phones to cooperate—ear to phone, no connection, redial, ear to phone, still no connection, type off a text, I’m sorry, sending failed; some were streaming out of the many buildings lining the road—look left, then right, how can I get where I need to go, step right, hesitate, turn left and walk down the street; others were simply waiting on the side, watching people like me and my family quickly passing by—wondering where everyone was headed when there were few places to go.
The difference between this scene and those in the movie? No real panic or pandemonium.
It was everything I had come to expect of the Japanese—calm and orderliness. Then again, I wasn’t aware of the magnitude of what had transpired just 45 minutes ago—maybe most others didn’t either? I doubt that. I would later hear people say this earthquake was clearly different from others, and they knew it. I just hadn’t been in Japan long enough to know it myself.
I was riding in a long silver train with a thick light green stripe along the side going 55 miles an hour. The Yamanote Line, one of Tokyo’s busiest train lines connecting 29 major stops in the downtown Tokyo area. My family was with me, having arrived in Tokyo to visit me just two nights prior.
We’d spent the day walking around Sugamo, otherwise known as “Obachan Harajuku,” a shopping wonderland for elderly ladies—but also quite interesting for tourists—then took a tram to Waseda, where we visited the prestigious Waseda University.
From there, we’d decided to head back to Ikebukuro, where our hotel was located, just two stations down from the station nearest the university.
We boarded the train, which wasn’t too crowded because it was still the middle of the afternoon, but ended up having to stand anyway, and headed back to home base.
As the train started pulling into the first station, I felt a slight rocking and stumbled back a few steps. I tightened my grip on the plastic gray handle hanging from the ceiling to regain my balance, but the rocking only intensified.
We were in the seventh or eighth car back and had just made it to the platform when the train stopped. Except it didn’t stop. Rocking, that is.
Looking up, I caught the eye of the young Japanese lady sitting in front of me, knowing in both of our eyes—another jishin (earthquake).
After a second, I realized this one was quite a bit bigger than others I’d felt during my seven months in Japan. The floor of the car was rolling beneath my feet; if I’d let go of my handle, I would’ve been stumbling back and forth like a drunk. Still, no one around me seemed remotely alarmed, so panic didn’t set in this time; this was at least the third earthquake I’d felt since I arrived in Japan so I’d gotten relatively used to the trembling of the earth. Complacent, you’d say.
I turned to my family standing to my right and whispered, “Earthquake.” As if they couldn't feel it. They didn’t seem overly concerned either, a tacit calmness hanging in the air of the car.
The train swayed side to side, as a boat does in high seas. It was a disorienting feeling, but I told myself it’d be over soon enough so my family and I could continue our Tokyo adventure. Looking back, it surprises me how calm and unconcerned I was. Oh, just a little earthquake, then everything will be back to normal. I blame this naiveté on my first earthquake experience in Japan, which I had thought was a big deal, but apparently wasn’t. No one in the room with me so much as flinched as it happened, and that quake hadn’t even made that night’s news.
I gazed out the large window in front of me, watching the roof over the platform wave up and down, large buildings that looked as if they were floating around in back, as if we were under water. Surreal. I’d never seen anything so large sway so much, I was almost afraid something was going to come tumbling down on the train.
The swaying started to subside after a minute or two, when finally a calm male voice came over the loudspeaker in Japanese. I picked up words here and there, but couldn’t understand exactly what was being said. Disappointed in myself, I resolved to study even harder after my family left. I didn’t want to be left out of the loop if something like this happened again. Little did I know that this kind of earthquake was more like a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
After the announcement finished, passengers sitting on either side of the train started glancing around. I noticed that a few people in the car in front had started gathering their things from the overhead rack, but still no one left. Would the train start moving soon, I wondered.
No one in our car or the one behind prepared to leave, so my family and I stayed where we were as well. My dad said that the workers probably had to check the tracks for cracks or breaks, so he doubted the trains would be running for at least a couple of hours.
Just our luck! It was only my family’s second full day in Japan and this kind of thing happens. “What luck,” I whispered to them. My parents just nodded as my brother continued to stare out the window.
The male voice came on again, maybe five minutes after the first announcement. I strained my ears to hear what was being said, but still understood little. Now some people in our car gathered their things close, preparing to leave. So the train wouldn’t be going after all, I thought.
One by one, two by two, passengers in our car and the ones in back got up and started the trek to the front of the train.
“Should we go too,” my mother asked me.
“Let’s just wait a little more,” I said. Our car was still more than half full and there were still people in the car in front.
The voice came on a third time, prompting a few more people from our car to leave.
Outside on the platform, disembarked passengers were standing around, many on their cell phones, though few were having any luck connecting.
“Now should we try going towards the front,” I pondered out loud.
“Do you want to,” my dad asked.
“Let’s just try,” I said to him.
The four of us gathered our things and walked towards the car in front. Still some people in there. Into the next car. Still people there too. After walking through a couple more cars, we got to an empty one with doors open.
“Maybe we could wait in here a little,” I told my family. There were still lots of other people in the train, so maybe there was some hope after all.
The voice came on a fourth time and this time I heard something about 8.3. I told my dad I thought I’d heard them announce the earthquake had been an 8.3.
Alarmed, my dad told me that was probably wrong. “An 8.3 is big. Really big. That can’t be. That would mean major damage, deaths,” he told me. “And maybe even a tsunami.”
We continued to sit in the train wondering what to do next. Should we get off and find another way to get back to Ikebukuro, or sit and wait it out in the hope that trains would start running again?
That decision was made for us when a final announcement was made, telling passengers that they must get off the train. I’d actually understood this one, though I wouldn’t have needed to as all the other passengers who’d been waiting on the train started to make their way to the cars in front with open doors.
My family and I left the train and stood in line for the escalator to the exit. What’ll we do, I wondered.
We got up to street level where hordes of passengers stood around just inside the ticket gate, with many more standing outside of the station. I guess they weren’t sure what to do either.
“Do you think the trains will start running again,” I asked my dad, not wanting to go out the gates if there was a chance we’d get to take a train back to the hotel.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But if it really was an 8.3, not today.”
We exited the gates, figuring there was probably nothing we could do but find another way to our hotel. Looking at all the people sitting and standing around, I realized this was probably a bigger deal than I’d thought.
I grabbed my simple white phone out of my pocket, intent on making sure my friends and host family were all right. I found my host mom’s number in my contacts and pressed send, only to be met with a message that my call could not be made because lines were too busy. I tried a couple more times with the same result. Texting would have to do.
In the meantime, my dad figured out which way we’d have to walk if we wanted to get back to Ikebukuro. “We’d better start now if we want to get back before it gets dark,” he said as I continued to text my host mom. Good thing I’d decided against wearing my new shoes.
I sent the text to my host family, as well as a couple of others to my close friends, then closed my phone, and went after my family, who had started walking off.
What a weird feeling. I couldn’t seem to walk straight and it looked like the people just standing there were moving back and forth in front of me. I stopped walking, but the people kept shaking. Thus started the many yoshin (aftershocks) to come.
The trek back to the hotel was crowded, made worse by the fact that we were walking against the crowd. Buses would pass by, filled so completely that body parts could be seen smashed against windows. Peeking into small family bars on the main road, one could see large groups of men and women sitting. Just sitting, as the power had gone out in many areas.
After walking for about an hour, we finally made it to Ikebukuro. The sidewalks, normally reasonably crowded, were overflowing with businessmen and shoppers, students and elderly walking in every which direction.
Most businesses were closing up, probably to give employees a chance to get home. It was an odd feeling seeing so many people around with no place to go. We would later find out that many of these people, as well as those we’d seen on the way to Ikebukuro, were either stranded for the night, or would make the hours-long trek home by foot.
My family and I first headed towards Seiyu, the grocery store near our hotel. It was getting on towards dinnertime and we figured there would be little other opportunity to get food.
As we neared the store, we saw lights and our hopes rose. Maybe we’d be having dinner after all. But we tried the doors and they were locked. Our hopes shot down, we walked dejectedly away.
We headed to Sunshine City, the complex that housed our hotel, as well as a 60-story skyscraper with observation deck, an extensive shopping mall, an aquarium, a planetarium, a museum, a theater, even a convention center and mini indoor theme park; it’s an all-in-one entertainment center.
The main entrance to the mall, normally crowded with avid shoppers riding up and down the long escalators and walking through the underground hallway, was eerily empty. It felt almost wrong to be going down the escalator when the few people who were on it were going up.
In complete contrast to the emptiness of the entrance, there were crowds of people still in the mall, most sitting around on benches and stairs. Stores were closed, but most people knew they wouldn’t be making it home today.
We made it to the hotel entrance in the mall, happy to have made it back. Tired and hungry, yes, but alive and well.
Entering the hotel, there were people loitering around, with a line of guests sitting against the walls beginning to form. There was a man in a yukata (casual summer kimono often provided by hotels for after-shower room wear in Japan) and room slippers who looked like he’d just been woken up. The spacious lobby had been turned into a mini viewing room, complete with mismatched chairs gathered around an old 25-or-so inch box television.
“They’re probably not letting anyone in the rooms right now,” my dad said. “Need to check the floors and make sure everything’s working all right.”
My brother and I peeked into the elevator bank anyway. Better safe than sorry; I didn’t want to be sitting on a hard floor with crowds of other people after a long day out if I didn’t have to. But my dad was right. There was a hotel worker standing in front of the elevators already turning away another party, so we dejectedly walked back to the hall.
“How long do you think it’ll take,” I asked my parents, who’d found a spot big enough for the four of us under a nice warm vent.
“Couple of hours, maybe,” my dad replied. “The hotel’s got 35 floors. It’s gonna take a while.” The perfect way to spend a day in Tokyo.
At this point, I still didn’t know just how disastrous the days events had been; that the earthquake, at 9.0 in magnitude, was one of the top five largest in the world since record-keeping began in 1900; that the earthquake had set off a tsunami in the Tohoku region in Japan so large it would travel as far as 10 kilometers inland, killing thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and causing billions of dollars in damage; that the tsunami would cause the nuclear meltdown of several reactors at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, setting off worldwide panic of a nuclear disaster on par with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
That was all lost to me. With barely any information to work with, I couldn’t even begin to imagine that the earthquake was an event of epic proportions; that my relatives and friends back home were worried about my family and me; that it was possible Hawaii would be the next target of a tsunami generated by the earthquake. I was just worried about how the day would end, how the earthquake would affect my family’s next 12 days in Japan.
I peeked over at the television in the lobby, hoping to find out more about what was going on. There was an image of a burning building, with a broadcaster explaining the situation, but I couldn’t really understand what was being said. I stayed a little while longer hoping to learn more about the earthquake and the current state of Tokyo, but no such luck, so I headed back to where my family was sitting and took my place against the wall.
Since we’d started walking back to Ikebukuro, I’d been texting with a couple of friends who were also exchange students at the school I was studying at, as well as with my host mom, so we could keep each other updated with what was going on in our respective areas. Thankfully all were okay, though electricity and food problems were already cropping up.
But it was a text from my older sister, who had also planned to come on the trip with my parents and brother, but had to cancel, that gave us the first indication of just how big the earthquake had been. It read:
Hello. We all know about the earthquake and tsunami. We’ve been watching the news. Hope you are all safe. Everyone is concerned about you guys. If you can, text or email back just to let me know if you guys are okay. Really hope to hear from you soon. Please take care. Love, Wendi
Tsunami? This was the first we’d heard of the tsunami, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The earthquake had made the news back home? So it had been quite big. Magnitude 8.3 was possible then?
I texted back that we were all right, despite having had to walk about an hour back to our hotel in the cold, and the fact that we were stuck sitting in a hall in our hotel’s first floor while upper floors were being checked.
As it was around dinnertime, my mom and brother went to the Family Mart convenience store right near us in the hotel to see if there was any food for dinner; of course, with so many people gathering in the hotel, shelves gleamed silver; no bentos (Japanese lunch plates traditionally composed of rice, a meat dish, and various vegetable side dishes), no onigiri (rice balls with various fillings), no zaru soba plates (buckwheat noodles with a Japanese sauce and long onion topping), nothing.
So, my father and I volunteered to go back out into the city to scavenge for food. Despite the cold. Despite the crowds. Despite that almost every food shop we’d passed on our way to the hotel had been closed or in the process of closing.
We first headed back towards Seiyu to see if they had opened back up. Unfortunately, it was still closed, so instead we ventured towards the crowded maze of streets in front of the Sunshine City complex. With the sun now down, it was cold, probably in the upper-40s to mid-50s, if not lower. But we were hungry and worried that finding food could be even more difficult later, so we continued on.
The first four take-out eateries we stopped by were closed, including a McDonalds. I started losing hope of satisfying my aching stomach; we hadn’t even had a proper lunch.
Heading towards Ikebukuro station, my dad and I passed a line of people so long we couldn’t see the end of it. Food? No, they were waiting at a bus stop. Good luck. Buses had been running over capacity since the earthquake first hit about four-or-so hours ago. Most of these people were probably looking at an uncomfortable night in Ikebukuro.
I stopped to ask a middle-aged Japanese lady standing in line how long she’d been waiting for the bus. She’d replied that she’d already been waiting for two hours. And she wasn’t even at the front of the line.
Hearing that, I was thankful my family and I had only had to walk about an hour to get back to our hotel, that we even had a hotel to walk back to. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for those hundreds of people waiting for a bus they probably wouldn’t get to ride, for the thousands of people stuck in Tokyo with no way to get home but walk—so many slept in train stations and malls, hotel lobbies and office buildings. I later heard stories of friends’ parents walking three, four, even six hours to get home.
My dad and I walked on, I with a renewed sense of gratitude. I’d walk around as much as necessary to find food for my family and I. Some greater power must have felt I’d learned my lesson because my dad and I finally stumbled upon a Matsuya, an affordable chain eatery serving things like gyudon (seasoned beef and onions over rice), curry, and bentos. So I wouldn’t starve after all.
We ordered two curry gyudon and two regular gyudon for my dad and brother, and mom and me, respectively. The wait was about 10 minutes, which I didn’t mind considering I was comfortably standing in a heated shop filled with the delicious smells of sizzling meat, simmering curry, and freshly made rice. In fact, I would’ve been all too happy to wait in there until we could get back up to our rooms; beats sitting in a crowded hall of a hotel with nothing to do but stare at the person sitting across from you. Or sleep.
But time passed quickly because it always does the opposite of what we want, and my dad and I were back outside in the cold. Going back to our hotel, we passed by the forever-long bus line again, and I saw the same lady standing in the same spot she’d been in over 20 minutes ago. She was probably looking at another couple of hours in that line. That is, if she even made it on a bus.
There were less people on the streets now, though the mall had grown even more crowded as more and more people resigned themselves to spending the night in Tokyo.
We walked back into the hotel, also much more crowded than when we’d left, and sat back down by my mom and brother, all of us thankful to have food.
My dad sat and ate unabashedly, but my mom, brother and I hesitated—we’d noticed many of the people sitting around us eyeing the food. I felt awkward eating in front of so many hungry-looking people, but my loudly growling stomach got the best of me. Oh, that gyudon was just about the most delicious thing at the time. Hunger will do that to you.
I ate slowly, knowing there was nothing else to do but wait until we could finally go back up to our rooms. Unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t being very helpful informing non-Japanese guests, maybe even Japanese guests as I couldn’t understand much of the periodic announcements being made in Japanese, of the progress on floor checks. For the time being, we were still stuck, tired and uncomfortable in that hall crowded with tens of others, and more always walking in.
Many of those around us had fallen asleep, while a few others were reading or talking in whispers. With nothing else to do, I started falling asleep too.
After over four hours of sitting in that hallway, my parents woke me up, having noticed guests starting to pack up and head towards the elevator bank. The wait was finally over.
Surprisingly, the elevators weren’t crowded, so we didn’t have to wait to get up to our rooms on the 28th floor. Once in the room I was sharing with my brother, I fell onto my bed, thankful that the day was almost over, ready to fall asleep and deal with all of the craziness in the morning.
Unfortunately, the day was not yet over.
At first, I thought I was hallucinating. I heard this high-pitched squeak that sounded like metal on metal and felt the building sway back and forth, like an inverted pendulum. Then a small buzzing noise started going off in the hall.
Panicking, I headed straight for my parents’ room, my brother closely following.
Bursting through their door, I demanded, “Is the building going crash down? Am I going to die in a hotel?”
My brother scoffed.
“It’s just an aftershock,” my dad said. “It’s supposed to feel like this. The higher up you are, the more you can feel the swing. That’s how it’s designed.”
There I was worried I might die then and there, and my dad, the sensible engineer, never one to panic, was giving me an engineering lesson.
“Are you sure we’re not going to fall,” I asked, still unconvinced as the building continued to sway, the high-pitched squeak still telling me I was doomed.
My parents told me to stop worrying and quiet down, they were watching the news to find out just what had happened today.
That caught my attention and I proceeded to sit down in a chair next to my mom’s bed, eyes locked on the television.
We were watching CNN, the anchor talking about today’s 8.9 earthquake hitting Japan, setting off a tsunami so large thousands had been killed, many more missing, and even more homeless.
Then a video of a news office taken during the earthquake. The office desks, tables, files, light fixtures, workers shaking violently, as if inside a rattle being shaken by baby.
But it was the video shown immediately after that that made everything so much more real, made the situation all the more heart-wrenching. Waves racing menacingly inland, carrying debris and taking out cars and buildings. People.
A mere five seconds of film and the reality, the immensity, of what had happened, sunk in. I was part of history in the making, in the center of it all. My experience, just one story of millions, and not even one of the more dramatic ones, to be told about the day the earth shook. The day millions of lives changed. A day I will always remember.
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We remember, will always remember, what happened. It shook us, leaving so many vulnerable and scared, but it also touched our hearts, our souls. Picking up the pieces is never easy and I admire those who have had the strength, courage and perseverance to move forward.
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I almost felt like an extra in the mass exodus scene of War of the Worlds. Except that I was in the midst of a triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—that would send all of Japan, no, the world, reeling.
There were people crowding the sidewalks, many walking away—from what, I can’t say, and I had little confidence they would make it to their final destinations anyway, what with buses as packed as they were and the trains not running.
Some were standing around desperately trying to get their cell phones to cooperate—ear to phone, no connection, redial, ear to phone, still no connection, type off a text, I’m sorry, sending failed; some were streaming out of the many buildings lining the road—look left, then right, how can I get where I need to go, step right, hesitate, turn left and walk down the street; others were simply waiting on the side, watching people like me and my family quickly passing by—wondering where everyone was headed when there were few places to go.
The difference between this scene and those in the movie? No real panic or pandemonium.
It was everything I had come to expect of the Japanese—calm and orderliness. Then again, I wasn’t aware of the magnitude of what had transpired just 45 minutes ago—maybe most others didn’t either? I doubt that. I would later hear people say this earthquake was clearly different from others, and they knew it. I just hadn’t been in Japan long enough to know it myself.
I was riding in a long silver train with a thick light green stripe along the side going 55 miles an hour. The Yamanote Line, one of Tokyo’s busiest train lines connecting 29 major stops in the downtown Tokyo area. My family was with me, having arrived in Tokyo to visit me just two nights prior.
We’d spent the day walking around Sugamo, otherwise known as “Obachan Harajuku,” a shopping wonderland for elderly ladies—but also quite interesting for tourists—then took a tram to Waseda, where we visited the prestigious Waseda University.
From there, we’d decided to head back to Ikebukuro, where our hotel was located, just two stations down from the station nearest the university.
We boarded the train, which wasn’t too crowded because it was still the middle of the afternoon, but ended up having to stand anyway, and headed back to home base.
As the train started pulling into the first station, I felt a slight rocking and stumbled back a few steps. I tightened my grip on the plastic gray handle hanging from the ceiling to regain my balance, but the rocking only intensified.
We were in the seventh or eighth car back and had just made it to the platform when the train stopped. Except it didn’t stop. Rocking, that is.
Looking up, I caught the eye of the young Japanese lady sitting in front of me, knowing in both of our eyes—another jishin (earthquake).
After a second, I realized this one was quite a bit bigger than others I’d felt during my seven months in Japan. The floor of the car was rolling beneath my feet; if I’d let go of my handle, I would’ve been stumbling back and forth like a drunk. Still, no one around me seemed remotely alarmed, so panic didn’t set in this time; this was at least the third earthquake I’d felt since I arrived in Japan so I’d gotten relatively used to the trembling of the earth. Complacent, you’d say.
I turned to my family standing to my right and whispered, “Earthquake.” As if they couldn't feel it. They didn’t seem overly concerned either, a tacit calmness hanging in the air of the car.
The train swayed side to side, as a boat does in high seas. It was a disorienting feeling, but I told myself it’d be over soon enough so my family and I could continue our Tokyo adventure. Looking back, it surprises me how calm and unconcerned I was. Oh, just a little earthquake, then everything will be back to normal. I blame this naiveté on my first earthquake experience in Japan, which I had thought was a big deal, but apparently wasn’t. No one in the room with me so much as flinched as it happened, and that quake hadn’t even made that night’s news.
I gazed out the large window in front of me, watching the roof over the platform wave up and down, large buildings that looked as if they were floating around in back, as if we were under water. Surreal. I’d never seen anything so large sway so much, I was almost afraid something was going to come tumbling down on the train.
The swaying started to subside after a minute or two, when finally a calm male voice came over the loudspeaker in Japanese. I picked up words here and there, but couldn’t understand exactly what was being said. Disappointed in myself, I resolved to study even harder after my family left. I didn’t want to be left out of the loop if something like this happened again. Little did I know that this kind of earthquake was more like a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
After the announcement finished, passengers sitting on either side of the train started glancing around. I noticed that a few people in the car in front had started gathering their things from the overhead rack, but still no one left. Would the train start moving soon, I wondered.
No one in our car or the one behind prepared to leave, so my family and I stayed where we were as well. My dad said that the workers probably had to check the tracks for cracks or breaks, so he doubted the trains would be running for at least a couple of hours.
Just our luck! It was only my family’s second full day in Japan and this kind of thing happens. “What luck,” I whispered to them. My parents just nodded as my brother continued to stare out the window.
The male voice came on again, maybe five minutes after the first announcement. I strained my ears to hear what was being said, but still understood little. Now some people in our car gathered their things close, preparing to leave. So the train wouldn’t be going after all, I thought.
One by one, two by two, passengers in our car and the ones in back got up and started the trek to the front of the train.
“Should we go too,” my mother asked me.
“Let’s just wait a little more,” I said. Our car was still more than half full and there were still people in the car in front.
The voice came on a third time, prompting a few more people from our car to leave.
Outside on the platform, disembarked passengers were standing around, many on their cell phones, though few were having any luck connecting.
“Now should we try going towards the front,” I pondered out loud.
“Do you want to,” my dad asked.
“Let’s just try,” I said to him.
The four of us gathered our things and walked towards the car in front. Still some people in there. Into the next car. Still people there too. After walking through a couple more cars, we got to an empty one with doors open.
“Maybe we could wait in here a little,” I told my family. There were still lots of other people in the train, so maybe there was some hope after all.
The voice came on a fourth time and this time I heard something about 8.3. I told my dad I thought I’d heard them announce the earthquake had been an 8.3.
Alarmed, my dad told me that was probably wrong. “An 8.3 is big. Really big. That can’t be. That would mean major damage, deaths,” he told me. “And maybe even a tsunami.”
We continued to sit in the train wondering what to do next. Should we get off and find another way to get back to Ikebukuro, or sit and wait it out in the hope that trains would start running again?
That decision was made for us when a final announcement was made, telling passengers that they must get off the train. I’d actually understood this one, though I wouldn’t have needed to as all the other passengers who’d been waiting on the train started to make their way to the cars in front with open doors.
My family and I left the train and stood in line for the escalator to the exit. What’ll we do, I wondered.
We got up to street level where hordes of passengers stood around just inside the ticket gate, with many more standing outside of the station. I guess they weren’t sure what to do either.
“Do you think the trains will start running again,” I asked my dad, not wanting to go out the gates if there was a chance we’d get to take a train back to the hotel.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But if it really was an 8.3, not today.”
We exited the gates, figuring there was probably nothing we could do but find another way to our hotel. Looking at all the people sitting and standing around, I realized this was probably a bigger deal than I’d thought.
I grabbed my simple white phone out of my pocket, intent on making sure my friends and host family were all right. I found my host mom’s number in my contacts and pressed send, only to be met with a message that my call could not be made because lines were too busy. I tried a couple more times with the same result. Texting would have to do.
In the meantime, my dad figured out which way we’d have to walk if we wanted to get back to Ikebukuro. “We’d better start now if we want to get back before it gets dark,” he said as I continued to text my host mom. Good thing I’d decided against wearing my new shoes.
I sent the text to my host family, as well as a couple of others to my close friends, then closed my phone, and went after my family, who had started walking off.
What a weird feeling. I couldn’t seem to walk straight and it looked like the people just standing there were moving back and forth in front of me. I stopped walking, but the people kept shaking. Thus started the many yoshin (aftershocks) to come.
The trek back to the hotel was crowded, made worse by the fact that we were walking against the crowd. Buses would pass by, filled so completely that body parts could be seen smashed against windows. Peeking into small family bars on the main road, one could see large groups of men and women sitting. Just sitting, as the power had gone out in many areas.
After walking for about an hour, we finally made it to Ikebukuro. The sidewalks, normally reasonably crowded, were overflowing with businessmen and shoppers, students and elderly walking in every which direction.
Most businesses were closing up, probably to give employees a chance to get home. It was an odd feeling seeing so many people around with no place to go. We would later find out that many of these people, as well as those we’d seen on the way to Ikebukuro, were either stranded for the night, or would make the hours-long trek home by foot.
My family and I first headed towards Seiyu, the grocery store near our hotel. It was getting on towards dinnertime and we figured there would be little other opportunity to get food.
As we neared the store, we saw lights and our hopes rose. Maybe we’d be having dinner after all. But we tried the doors and they were locked. Our hopes shot down, we walked dejectedly away.
We headed to Sunshine City, the complex that housed our hotel, as well as a 60-story skyscraper with observation deck, an extensive shopping mall, an aquarium, a planetarium, a museum, a theater, even a convention center and mini indoor theme park; it’s an all-in-one entertainment center.
The main entrance to the mall, normally crowded with avid shoppers riding up and down the long escalators and walking through the underground hallway, was eerily empty. It felt almost wrong to be going down the escalator when the few people who were on it were going up.
In complete contrast to the emptiness of the entrance, there were crowds of people still in the mall, most sitting around on benches and stairs. Stores were closed, but most people knew they wouldn’t be making it home today.
We made it to the hotel entrance in the mall, happy to have made it back. Tired and hungry, yes, but alive and well.
Entering the hotel, there were people loitering around, with a line of guests sitting against the walls beginning to form. There was a man in a yukata (casual summer kimono often provided by hotels for after-shower room wear in Japan) and room slippers who looked like he’d just been woken up. The spacious lobby had been turned into a mini viewing room, complete with mismatched chairs gathered around an old 25-or-so inch box television.
“They’re probably not letting anyone in the rooms right now,” my dad said. “Need to check the floors and make sure everything’s working all right.”
My brother and I peeked into the elevator bank anyway. Better safe than sorry; I didn’t want to be sitting on a hard floor with crowds of other people after a long day out if I didn’t have to. But my dad was right. There was a hotel worker standing in front of the elevators already turning away another party, so we dejectedly walked back to the hall.
“How long do you think it’ll take,” I asked my parents, who’d found a spot big enough for the four of us under a nice warm vent.
“Couple of hours, maybe,” my dad replied. “The hotel’s got 35 floors. It’s gonna take a while.” The perfect way to spend a day in Tokyo.
At this point, I still didn’t know just how disastrous the days events had been; that the earthquake, at 9.0 in magnitude, was one of the top five largest in the world since record-keeping began in 1900; that the earthquake had set off a tsunami in the Tohoku region in Japan so large it would travel as far as 10 kilometers inland, killing thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and causing billions of dollars in damage; that the tsunami would cause the nuclear meltdown of several reactors at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, setting off worldwide panic of a nuclear disaster on par with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
That was all lost to me. With barely any information to work with, I couldn’t even begin to imagine that the earthquake was an event of epic proportions; that my relatives and friends back home were worried about my family and me; that it was possible Hawaii would be the next target of a tsunami generated by the earthquake. I was just worried about how the day would end, how the earthquake would affect my family’s next 12 days in Japan.
I peeked over at the television in the lobby, hoping to find out more about what was going on. There was an image of a burning building, with a broadcaster explaining the situation, but I couldn’t really understand what was being said. I stayed a little while longer hoping to learn more about the earthquake and the current state of Tokyo, but no such luck, so I headed back to where my family was sitting and took my place against the wall.
Since we’d started walking back to Ikebukuro, I’d been texting with a couple of friends who were also exchange students at the school I was studying at, as well as with my host mom, so we could keep each other updated with what was going on in our respective areas. Thankfully all were okay, though electricity and food problems were already cropping up.
But it was a text from my older sister, who had also planned to come on the trip with my parents and brother, but had to cancel, that gave us the first indication of just how big the earthquake had been. It read:
Hello. We all know about the earthquake and tsunami. We’ve been watching the news. Hope you are all safe. Everyone is concerned about you guys. If you can, text or email back just to let me know if you guys are okay. Really hope to hear from you soon. Please take care. Love, Wendi
Tsunami? This was the first we’d heard of the tsunami, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The earthquake had made the news back home? So it had been quite big. Magnitude 8.3 was possible then?
I texted back that we were all right, despite having had to walk about an hour back to our hotel in the cold, and the fact that we were stuck sitting in a hall in our hotel’s first floor while upper floors were being checked.
As it was around dinnertime, my mom and brother went to the Family Mart convenience store right near us in the hotel to see if there was any food for dinner; of course, with so many people gathering in the hotel, shelves gleamed silver; no bentos (Japanese lunch plates traditionally composed of rice, a meat dish, and various vegetable side dishes), no onigiri (rice balls with various fillings), no zaru soba plates (buckwheat noodles with a Japanese sauce and long onion topping), nothing.
So, my father and I volunteered to go back out into the city to scavenge for food. Despite the cold. Despite the crowds. Despite that almost every food shop we’d passed on our way to the hotel had been closed or in the process of closing.
We first headed back towards Seiyu to see if they had opened back up. Unfortunately, it was still closed, so instead we ventured towards the crowded maze of streets in front of the Sunshine City complex. With the sun now down, it was cold, probably in the upper-40s to mid-50s, if not lower. But we were hungry and worried that finding food could be even more difficult later, so we continued on.
The first four take-out eateries we stopped by were closed, including a McDonalds. I started losing hope of satisfying my aching stomach; we hadn’t even had a proper lunch.
Heading towards Ikebukuro station, my dad and I passed a line of people so long we couldn’t see the end of it. Food? No, they were waiting at a bus stop. Good luck. Buses had been running over capacity since the earthquake first hit about four-or-so hours ago. Most of these people were probably looking at an uncomfortable night in Ikebukuro.
I stopped to ask a middle-aged Japanese lady standing in line how long she’d been waiting for the bus. She’d replied that she’d already been waiting for two hours. And she wasn’t even at the front of the line.
Hearing that, I was thankful my family and I had only had to walk about an hour to get back to our hotel, that we even had a hotel to walk back to. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for those hundreds of people waiting for a bus they probably wouldn’t get to ride, for the thousands of people stuck in Tokyo with no way to get home but walk—so many slept in train stations and malls, hotel lobbies and office buildings. I later heard stories of friends’ parents walking three, four, even six hours to get home.
My dad and I walked on, I with a renewed sense of gratitude. I’d walk around as much as necessary to find food for my family and I. Some greater power must have felt I’d learned my lesson because my dad and I finally stumbled upon a Matsuya, an affordable chain eatery serving things like gyudon (seasoned beef and onions over rice), curry, and bentos. So I wouldn’t starve after all.
We ordered two curry gyudon and two regular gyudon for my dad and brother, and mom and me, respectively. The wait was about 10 minutes, which I didn’t mind considering I was comfortably standing in a heated shop filled with the delicious smells of sizzling meat, simmering curry, and freshly made rice. In fact, I would’ve been all too happy to wait in there until we could get back up to our rooms; beats sitting in a crowded hall of a hotel with nothing to do but stare at the person sitting across from you. Or sleep.
But time passed quickly because it always does the opposite of what we want, and my dad and I were back outside in the cold. Going back to our hotel, we passed by the forever-long bus line again, and I saw the same lady standing in the same spot she’d been in over 20 minutes ago. She was probably looking at another couple of hours in that line. That is, if she even made it on a bus.
There were less people on the streets now, though the mall had grown even more crowded as more and more people resigned themselves to spending the night in Tokyo.
We walked back into the hotel, also much more crowded than when we’d left, and sat back down by my mom and brother, all of us thankful to have food.
My dad sat and ate unabashedly, but my mom, brother and I hesitated—we’d noticed many of the people sitting around us eyeing the food. I felt awkward eating in front of so many hungry-looking people, but my loudly growling stomach got the best of me. Oh, that gyudon was just about the most delicious thing at the time. Hunger will do that to you.
I ate slowly, knowing there was nothing else to do but wait until we could finally go back up to our rooms. Unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t being very helpful informing non-Japanese guests, maybe even Japanese guests as I couldn’t understand much of the periodic announcements being made in Japanese, of the progress on floor checks. For the time being, we were still stuck, tired and uncomfortable in that hall crowded with tens of others, and more always walking in.
Many of those around us had fallen asleep, while a few others were reading or talking in whispers. With nothing else to do, I started falling asleep too.
After over four hours of sitting in that hallway, my parents woke me up, having noticed guests starting to pack up and head towards the elevator bank. The wait was finally over.
Surprisingly, the elevators weren’t crowded, so we didn’t have to wait to get up to our rooms on the 28th floor. Once in the room I was sharing with my brother, I fell onto my bed, thankful that the day was almost over, ready to fall asleep and deal with all of the craziness in the morning.
Unfortunately, the day was not yet over.
At first, I thought I was hallucinating. I heard this high-pitched squeak that sounded like metal on metal and felt the building sway back and forth, like an inverted pendulum. Then a small buzzing noise started going off in the hall.
Panicking, I headed straight for my parents’ room, my brother closely following.
Bursting through their door, I demanded, “Is the building going crash down? Am I going to die in a hotel?”
My brother scoffed.
“It’s just an aftershock,” my dad said. “It’s supposed to feel like this. The higher up you are, the more you can feel the swing. That’s how it’s designed.”
There I was worried I might die then and there, and my dad, the sensible engineer, never one to panic, was giving me an engineering lesson.
“Are you sure we’re not going to fall,” I asked, still unconvinced as the building continued to sway, the high-pitched squeak still telling me I was doomed.
My parents told me to stop worrying and quiet down, they were watching the news to find out just what had happened today.
That caught my attention and I proceeded to sit down in a chair next to my mom’s bed, eyes locked on the television.
We were watching CNN, the anchor talking about today’s 8.9 earthquake hitting Japan, setting off a tsunami so large thousands had been killed, many more missing, and even more homeless.
Then a video of a news office taken during the earthquake. The office desks, tables, files, light fixtures, workers shaking violently, as if inside a rattle being shaken by baby.
But it was the video shown immediately after that that made everything so much more real, made the situation all the more heart-wrenching. Waves racing menacingly inland, carrying debris and taking out cars and buildings. People.
A mere five seconds of film and the reality, the immensity, of what had happened, sunk in. I was part of history in the making, in the center of it all. My experience, just one story of millions, and not even one of the more dramatic ones, to be told about the day the earth shook. The day millions of lives changed. A day I will always remember.
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We remember, will always remember, what happened. It shook us, leaving so many vulnerable and scared, but it also touched our hearts, our souls. Picking up the pieces is never easy and I admire those who have had the strength, courage and perseverance to move forward.