In my last post I mentioned I was about to travel down to Tokyo for a bit and then maybe head further south. I spent the first week in Tokyo, meeting up with friends, drinking, eating and generally pissing about. Much interesting stories came out of that week and it probably would have made a readable blog post in itself - but then, on Friday 11th March at 14:46, the ground below my feet started shaking. The rather unsnappily named "Tohoku Region Pacific Ocean Offshore Earthquake" had struck.
I was walking along the street in Waseda with my friend Ina looking for a decent coffeeshop, when we became aware of a shaking sound coming from one of the shops we walked past. An old lady was standing in the shop's doorway looking up. My eyes followed her gaze and I realised the taller buildings were swinging backwards and forwards. Then I became aware of the ground beneath my feet shaking and lurching. By this point, cars had stopped and people were coming outside to stand in the street.
People keep asking me "What does it feel like?" I had trouble answering this question at first, I couldn't really describe it. People 18 stories up a skyskraper have a much different experience than people on the ground. For us on the ground it's not so much like the ground shaking, but more as if gravity itself is shifting beneath your feet. On the way home in the plane we experienced some pretty nasty turbulence, and it definitely had a similar vibe to the quake, a kind of lunging and jolting feeling in the pit of your stomach.
It took a while for the shake to die down, and for ages there was a creepy echo of the swaying buildings - giant wobbleboards resonating through the streets. Me and Ina agreed that it was both awesome and creepy, but the question had to be asked... just how bad was that? We both have little TVs on our mobile phones, so Ina turned hers on and said "shiiit!" Some coastal areas were already starting to flood from the Tsunami, which hit almost immediately. Then again "shiiiiit!" More pictures were coming in, pictures of newrooms full of helmet-clad Japanese newsreaders trying to conduct themselves appropriately while their entire studio shakes.
We made our way to a nearby tapioca coffee shop all the time keeping an eye on the TV. The Shiiiiiiits were getting longer with each new set of images coming in from the news. It was starting to sink in now that this was a disaster of serious proportions. My initial excitement was beginning to turn into fear. What if it's not over? What if that was just a prelude for somehing greater?
I went back with Ina to her dorm, and she had to go and work on a presentation, but another mate, Dan, lives there too, so he came and joined me. We wandered around for a bit, trying to find somewhere for a coffee or a pint, but soon realised that the streets were packed full of people. Many higher buildings and shopping centers had closed due to the quake and the rail systems had closed all lines resutling streets full of people queueing for busses and payphones, or just hanging around, not knowing what to do next. Few places were open and it was hard to find a seat in any of them, but we did mangage to find a couple of seats in a nice cafe where the manager, for reasons we never did quite work out, kindly bought our coffees for us.
Not knowing what to do with ourselves we decided to walk to Shinjuku. The streets of Shinjuku are some of the busiest in Tokyo at the best of times, but tonight they were ram-packed. We spent some time watching the news on one of the giant screens, and then it transpired that some of the subway lines were about to reopen so I headed to my station and made my way back to my hostel. On the train I spoke to another English guy, Joe I think he said, who told me that he was actually in a dentists chair the moment the quake struck... sod that!
That night I didn't sleep. I just stayed up watching the news, too scared to go to bed, in case I needed to be awake in an emergency.
The next day, and for the remainder of my time in Tokyo, there were apparently something like 500 aftershocks, some of them decent quakes in their own rights, and it was a tense time, but I was sure the worst of it was over and thoughts were turning to carrying on with my holiday in Kyoto. But news had started to focus on the situation at the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. By this point, the French and Germans had already scarpered. I don't know what their media had been saying, but they were genuinely scared. The British were a bit more relaxed. The FCO were recommending that British Nationals avoid travelling to Japan unnecessarily, but they never said anything about those already there having to return to the UK. Just stay out of the 30km exclusion zone, was their advice (straight from the words of the British Consul in Osaka, who I spoke to in person a few days later).
Unfortunately, Newcastle Uni apparently misinterpreted the danger and told me and my classmates to basically get out of the country. At first they gave us a choice, but by the time I had got to Kyoto, they had changed their minds. They wanted us out. My problem was that when I had left Akita for Tokyo, 7 days before the Quake, I had neglected to bring my passport with me. Well how was I supposed to know THIS was going to happen? Travel to the north by rail and road was limited or impossible depending on your source, so if I was going to leave the country I would need an emergency passport. I told Newcastle this (adding that I was perfectly safe, and that I get more radiation from my mobile phone than from anything happening in Fukushima) in the hope that they would tell me to carry on with my holiday. But it wasn't to be. I'd just come from Tokyo, so I couldnt very well turn straight back to go to the embassy, so I went to the British Consulate in Osaka to ask about emergency passports. I was in there for a total of 12 hours over two days.
NCL's travel insurers had said they would book my flight home, but that I needed to have my emergency passport for them to make the booking. The consulate said they would give me the EP, but that I had to give them my exact flight details. So this little catch-22 went on for much longer than necessary and what made me so angry was that it was all for nothing, all because Newcastle over-reacted. My other English friends from Leeds and other home universities didn't get recalled, although most of them have decided to come home for a while anyway.
The Consulate was nowhere near as busy as it might have been, but I met some interesting people there, including a guy from Bloomberg News, who seemed to have some knowledge that the rest of us didn't have, and a guy who worked for Ikea, who had chartered a plane for the company's employees in Japan. He felt awful because all the foreigners were being told to leave, while the Japanese employees had to stay put in Tokyo. Well done Ikea, way to completely destroy the working relationships between your employees. They'll never be able to look their Japanese friends in the eyes again. Not a single person in the room actually wanted to leave Japan. They were either being forced to by TPTB or had wives and children and wanted to send them to the UK as a mere precaution.
But leave Japan I did, against my better judgement, and the mission to get back ASAP is already on. In using an emergency passport they had to void my current passport, which means I have to now apply for a new one, and I also will have to get old of another Student visa. They don't normally dish out the same type of visa to the same person twice, but I'm hoping they'll understand my plight. All my stuff is still in Akita, and I've already paid for the Spring semester, which starts in mid-april, so I'm going back whether NCL like it or not. I'll keep you up to date with how this goes...
I've done a lot of moaning in this post, and in the past week in general. Poor me. And while I do genuinely feel that I've been a bit hard done by, I haven't forgotten the people who really need our sympathy. There are still something like 12,000 people unaccounted for in the aftermath of the Tsunami. And the chances of any of them turning up alive are pretty much gone now. I'm lucky that all of my friends are accounted for, but I've met people who still haven't heard from a grandmother here or an aunty there. Miles and miles of Japan are in a complete mess that will take years, if not decades to sort out and thousands of people have lost everything. I'm hearing more and more about voluteer programs being set up to help out in the area. I really wish I could sign up and lend a hand, but instead I'm stuck here in the UK being absolutely useless.
The Japanese people have been amazing through this time, and I love them more than ever before. They deserve our recognition and help. The best I can do at the moment is urge anyone who hasn't already, to consider making a donation to the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal, or something similar (be warned there are a lot of fake donation webpages out there).
http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal
Bye for now...
I was walking along the street in Waseda with my friend Ina looking for a decent coffeeshop, when we became aware of a shaking sound coming from one of the shops we walked past. An old lady was standing in the shop's doorway looking up. My eyes followed her gaze and I realised the taller buildings were swinging backwards and forwards. Then I became aware of the ground beneath my feet shaking and lurching. By this point, cars had stopped and people were coming outside to stand in the street.
People keep asking me "What does it feel like?" I had trouble answering this question at first, I couldn't really describe it. People 18 stories up a skyskraper have a much different experience than people on the ground. For us on the ground it's not so much like the ground shaking, but more as if gravity itself is shifting beneath your feet. On the way home in the plane we experienced some pretty nasty turbulence, and it definitely had a similar vibe to the quake, a kind of lunging and jolting feeling in the pit of your stomach.
It took a while for the shake to die down, and for ages there was a creepy echo of the swaying buildings - giant wobbleboards resonating through the streets. Me and Ina agreed that it was both awesome and creepy, but the question had to be asked... just how bad was that? We both have little TVs on our mobile phones, so Ina turned hers on and said "shiiit!" Some coastal areas were already starting to flood from the Tsunami, which hit almost immediately. Then again "shiiiiit!" More pictures were coming in, pictures of newrooms full of helmet-clad Japanese newsreaders trying to conduct themselves appropriately while their entire studio shakes.
We made our way to a nearby tapioca coffee shop all the time keeping an eye on the TV. The Shiiiiiiits were getting longer with each new set of images coming in from the news. It was starting to sink in now that this was a disaster of serious proportions. My initial excitement was beginning to turn into fear. What if it's not over? What if that was just a prelude for somehing greater?
I went back with Ina to her dorm, and she had to go and work on a presentation, but another mate, Dan, lives there too, so he came and joined me. We wandered around for a bit, trying to find somewhere for a coffee or a pint, but soon realised that the streets were packed full of people. Many higher buildings and shopping centers had closed due to the quake and the rail systems had closed all lines resutling streets full of people queueing for busses and payphones, or just hanging around, not knowing what to do next. Few places were open and it was hard to find a seat in any of them, but we did mangage to find a couple of seats in a nice cafe where the manager, for reasons we never did quite work out, kindly bought our coffees for us.
Not knowing what to do with ourselves we decided to walk to Shinjuku. The streets of Shinjuku are some of the busiest in Tokyo at the best of times, but tonight they were ram-packed. We spent some time watching the news on one of the giant screens, and then it transpired that some of the subway lines were about to reopen so I headed to my station and made my way back to my hostel. On the train I spoke to another English guy, Joe I think he said, who told me that he was actually in a dentists chair the moment the quake struck... sod that!
That night I didn't sleep. I just stayed up watching the news, too scared to go to bed, in case I needed to be awake in an emergency.
The next day, and for the remainder of my time in Tokyo, there were apparently something like 500 aftershocks, some of them decent quakes in their own rights, and it was a tense time, but I was sure the worst of it was over and thoughts were turning to carrying on with my holiday in Kyoto. But news had started to focus on the situation at the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. By this point, the French and Germans had already scarpered. I don't know what their media had been saying, but they were genuinely scared. The British were a bit more relaxed. The FCO were recommending that British Nationals avoid travelling to Japan unnecessarily, but they never said anything about those already there having to return to the UK. Just stay out of the 30km exclusion zone, was their advice (straight from the words of the British Consul in Osaka, who I spoke to in person a few days later).
Unfortunately, Newcastle Uni apparently misinterpreted the danger and told me and my classmates to basically get out of the country. At first they gave us a choice, but by the time I had got to Kyoto, they had changed their minds. They wanted us out. My problem was that when I had left Akita for Tokyo, 7 days before the Quake, I had neglected to bring my passport with me. Well how was I supposed to know THIS was going to happen? Travel to the north by rail and road was limited or impossible depending on your source, so if I was going to leave the country I would need an emergency passport. I told Newcastle this (adding that I was perfectly safe, and that I get more radiation from my mobile phone than from anything happening in Fukushima) in the hope that they would tell me to carry on with my holiday. But it wasn't to be. I'd just come from Tokyo, so I couldnt very well turn straight back to go to the embassy, so I went to the British Consulate in Osaka to ask about emergency passports. I was in there for a total of 12 hours over two days.
NCL's travel insurers had said they would book my flight home, but that I needed to have my emergency passport for them to make the booking. The consulate said they would give me the EP, but that I had to give them my exact flight details. So this little catch-22 went on for much longer than necessary and what made me so angry was that it was all for nothing, all because Newcastle over-reacted. My other English friends from Leeds and other home universities didn't get recalled, although most of them have decided to come home for a while anyway.
The Consulate was nowhere near as busy as it might have been, but I met some interesting people there, including a guy from Bloomberg News, who seemed to have some knowledge that the rest of us didn't have, and a guy who worked for Ikea, who had chartered a plane for the company's employees in Japan. He felt awful because all the foreigners were being told to leave, while the Japanese employees had to stay put in Tokyo. Well done Ikea, way to completely destroy the working relationships between your employees. They'll never be able to look their Japanese friends in the eyes again. Not a single person in the room actually wanted to leave Japan. They were either being forced to by TPTB or had wives and children and wanted to send them to the UK as a mere precaution.
But leave Japan I did, against my better judgement, and the mission to get back ASAP is already on. In using an emergency passport they had to void my current passport, which means I have to now apply for a new one, and I also will have to get old of another Student visa. They don't normally dish out the same type of visa to the same person twice, but I'm hoping they'll understand my plight. All my stuff is still in Akita, and I've already paid for the Spring semester, which starts in mid-april, so I'm going back whether NCL like it or not. I'll keep you up to date with how this goes...
I've done a lot of moaning in this post, and in the past week in general. Poor me. And while I do genuinely feel that I've been a bit hard done by, I haven't forgotten the people who really need our sympathy. There are still something like 12,000 people unaccounted for in the aftermath of the Tsunami. And the chances of any of them turning up alive are pretty much gone now. I'm lucky that all of my friends are accounted for, but I've met people who still haven't heard from a grandmother here or an aunty there. Miles and miles of Japan are in a complete mess that will take years, if not decades to sort out and thousands of people have lost everything. I'm hearing more and more about voluteer programs being set up to help out in the area. I really wish I could sign up and lend a hand, but instead I'm stuck here in the UK being absolutely useless.
The Japanese people have been amazing through this time, and I love them more than ever before. They deserve our recognition and help. The best I can do at the moment is urge anyone who hasn't already, to consider making a donation to the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal, or something similar (be warned there are a lot of fake donation webpages out there).
http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal
Bye for now...
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