Earthquake Cross Training

So since the earthquake forced me into walking, biking, and going up and down stairs all day, I suppose the tale is appropriate for this blog.

I was sitting in my office when it began and, as usual, I just kept working through the start of the earthquake. We have so many of them that you just get used to it, but this one quickly got a lot bigger than the others. I looked outside to see if I could see other buildings swaying, but I couldn't. The building soon announced an evacuation, and when I saw the office manager and a few others heading out, I thought that was what we had to do, so I went with. (Turns out only about 1/3 of the office left; the others pretty much just kept working.)

As we made our way down 37 flights of stairs to the ground floor, the walls were literally cracking around us. That sounds scarier than it is, because it was just the spackling between plates of drywall that was cracking for the most part. In any case, you couldn't make it down those stairs without holding on to a rail, and the many women with heels on were faring even worse. Heels are definitely not earthquake wear.

When we got to the bottom, we milled about for a while as security told us the building was being checked out. It seemed that we'd be waiting for quite some time, so I decided to head off to check on my family. Neither my iPhone nor my Blackberry were working, so that meant a walk home.

Part way through the walk home, I managed to open a line of communication with my wife, who told me that my oldest and her babysitter had not yet come home, so I rerouted to go past her school. Sure enough, she had left with the babysitter a while earlier.

I got home, quickly changed, and headed out to search for them via bike. It turned out that they had weathered both the quake and the aftermath in a park; Felicia just continued playing the whole time, and the babysitter didn't realize just how big the earthquake was. They simply came home at the normal time before dinner. Once they did, Aki sent me an email on my Blackberry, and I quickly headed back home.

Checking my work email on my Blackberry once I got home, things seemed to be relatively back to normal at the office, so I headed back to take care of a few things and to get the stuff I would need to work over the weekend. I got back via bike, painfully climbed up 37 flights of stairs and took care of what I needed to do.

By the time I left, the elevator was working up to floor 13 again, so I only had to go down 24 flights. Back on the bike heading home, it was clear that bikes were by far the superior means of transportation for getting around Tokyo. The trains weren't running. Cars were stuck bumper to bumper for miles on end, and most of my ride was spent weaving in and out of the open spaces between the stopped cars. Motorcycles and scooters kept getting stuck in places that were small enough to fit my bike through. And pedestrians were jam packed into the sidewalks—much more so than when I had walked down some of those same sidewalks to come home earlier in the day.

So, finally home, I thought my earthquake day would be just about done—aside from the obvious aftershocks—but the day had one more kick in it: my wife and I smelled what was either a gas leak or sewer fumes coming up through the pipes. After debating a while about which it might be, we chose safe over sorry and gave a call to 119 (Japan's (in)version of 911). Not even 10 minutes later, some firemen and a guy in a hazmat suit were testing things out with electronic devices and whatnot, which really spoke to me of the great organization that Tokyo has pulled off during this quake. They ultimately concluded that it was sewer fumes and running the water would solve the problem. We happily turned on the water and thanked them for their help.

While this story probably isn't atypical in Tokyo (i.e., the experience being more about inconvenience than injury), I can't say the same for other parts of Japan, and my thoughts are with those who've been affected more seriously than we have.