I'm not going to try to make a tenuous connection between the purpose of this blog and the earthquake & tsunami disaster (and currently increasing radiation woes) that occurred in the northeast (Tōhoku, which means northeast) region of Japan this past Friday. I don't need to frame this catastrophe in any other terms than the direct experience of it, since, after all, this is a chronicle of a runner's life, and both Vincent & myself have always approached the subject of running from a personal point of view. Nothing becomes more immediately personal than living through the history of a natural disaster.
So what happens when history allows you to escape unscathed from the surrounding terribleness?
It was Friday afternoon, 11 March 2011, I was gearing up to go snowboarding with Vin & his family the next morning in Niigata. It was a rest day from running, since I'm trying to follow Higdon's recovery schedule. I had gotten a late start on the day and needed to finish the laundry I meant to do the day before. Sitting in the dinning room talking to Yuko & her mom, I suddenly noticed both their eyes went wide, the words "地震" (earthquake) left their collective mouths. At that point it was a tremor. At that point it was a next to a joke, because I had never experienced an earthquake before, and I had been repeatedly assured by various sources that, while living in Japan, I would. I suppose that's to be expected when you live a singed hair's breadth away from kissing the lips of the infamous ring of fire. Almost mockingly, with a dash of gusto, I melodramatically dove under the table, because I really had no idea things were that bad. This being my first meeting with a quaker, I had no idea what to expect. Yuko's mom had told me when I first arrived that going under the table was earthquake protection procedure A#1, so that's exactly where I went when one appeared like a raven tapping at the chamber door. We were remiss to dismiss the initial trembles so lightly, because the quake took quick strides to make sure we paid far more attention to it as it cranked the intensity up to 9, sending sharp shivers from sendai down the spine of a nation.
We all huddled under the kitchen table to keep safe, while the power snapped off, the rafters rattled, and glasses clattered in the kitchen cabinets. The worst of it lasted a few minutes—I was still naive in what I thought was happening—and the terror didn't set in until Yuko's mom's tearful face began praying for it to end because it was going on for too long; she kept crying out "神様助けて" (God save us!). That's when it truly hit me that this situation was beyond the normal spectrum of what to expect from earthquakes. It was only a few minutes, but it was a crucial few minutes that would rearrange the northeast coast of Japan and continue to affect the quality of life throughout the nation in the coming week (and tragically, what is presumed as much, much, longer).
The power came back on. I grabbed the laptop, and though I couldn't fully sign online, I sent an IM to Vin, who was dealing with things on his side of town. My host mom ran to check on grandma. It seems almost too eerily ominous that since first arriving here in Tokyo, every night on the news, New Zealand's recent tussle with a temblor had been the hottest topic covered. Now we were faced with a hideous beast of our own. My immediate instinct, after righting a few objects that had been upended during the shakedown, was to head outside to assess the surrounding damage, and get a vibe from the neighborhood. I stopped in the foyer to change from slippers to shoes (as is the Japanese way), I then opened the front door unto an entirely unexpected sight (like Dorothy landing in Oz and being smacked in the face with technicolor-pimp-knuckles): the street was flooded. This was a shocking sight to behold for sure, however, this was not the tsunami's doing. A pipe had burst right in front of our house causing this flood. The water looked too clean to be from a polluted source. This pool that collected around our doorstep, craning its long watery neck down the driveway, was enough to leave us mostly stranded; though, Yuko and her cousin had knee-high rain boots to wade through the waters, and I found a narrow path to climb through the elevated garden ledge around the front of the house and hopped down to a dry area. This served as my only access route to outside the house for the remainder of the day, and the dry patch kept getting further away from the ledge, so it became increasingly more challenging to rely on this point of access.
People were stopping to take photos (or not stopping at all, as some drivers held their cellphones out open windows to record the sight as they plunged the depths of this comparatively shallow calamity), bikers were Gerald Fording through the wake of the watergate with legs lifted high off the peddles as they glided by, and neighbors trudged out of their homes to check on one another. A police officer appeared and disappeared within minutes. He returned later with some workers, who were trying to stop the water from flowing further down the street with little success: it went on for hours.
Returning indoors, things were relatively fine for us. We safely watched the horror unfolding on the television and discussed our options incase things turned more terrible than they already were. Eventually, they subdued the spewing fountain of water out front, and posted two workers to watch the area to make sure more water didn't come flooding out overnight. At about 11pm, we took hot tea out to the first worker we saw, an older fellow, very grateful for the refreshment. Hours later, at what must have been 3am, we were still awake—the aftershocks were keeping me/us awake—and decided to walk to the コンビニ (convenience store) whose fresh foods shelves were mostly empty, where we got more coffee and tea for the two workers. They were surprised by the gesture, but no less grateful to accept it. There's that thing about natural disaster where you just want to reach out and immediately help whoever you can, and while these workers were better off than the thousands of people without homes to the north of us in Miyagi prefeture, we just felt like giving something to someone. You know, sometimes you just need to reassure yourself that humanity still binds us all together. I'm sure they understood this, as crow's feet perched upon the brims of they're weary bloodshot eyes, giving us smiles and bows in return. The aftershocks continued through the night, and as unnerving as they were (and still are, as they have continued regularly over the past week), it is leaps and bounds better than the initial quake.
The next morning I went for a run in the day-after-disaster sun. It was quiet around town. My host mom had strongly warned me against running south towards the ocean, but I pointed out that it didn't really matter which direction I chose to go in, I face having to skirt along the hem of a plus size body of water eventually. Still, I heeded the motherly advice and chose a direction oposite the largest ocean area around us. As I ran past the river I could see the filth that had accumulated from the rough wallop the earthquake had given us: Trash, branches, you name it, were floating in a dirty green current, that just the day before had been pristine. I got nervous about seeing something lifeless floating by that I wouldn't be able to forget, so I kept my focused gaze on the road in front of me, only giving the river quick passing glances from time to time. It would turn out to be a short run anyway, because my ITBS knee pain flared up fast forcing me to return home.
Since then it has been a mad maelstrom of concerns and continued apprehension for our safety here in Tokyo, while the people that are truly suffering are the displaced families facing unimaginable loss 150 miles to the north, in the vicinity of Sendai/Fukushima/Iwate (Tōhoku region). My fingertips have callouses from the keystrokes they've spent quelling fears from friends & family abroad over the weekend, as death tolls shockingly rose and devastating footage cycled through the world's media; the news continues to carry increasingly worrisome claims of the looming fallout threat level of the catastrophe at hand. Japan is a wonderful place that has a long journey of healing ahead, hopefully the worst of this disaster is over, so the nation can pull together and begin to rebuild, while receiving the help it needs to truly get that underway. It's hard to say when things will begin to be OK—with the rising threat of these nuclear reactors breathing down our necks, thousands of lives already lost, complete towns destroyed, and struggling families completely displaced—but I hope the answer is soon. I hope you folks are safe out there, wherever in the world you may find yourselves: be well.
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