I'm grateful for my life.

Before I launch into the story of my earthquake weekend, I need to say: if you are reading this from somewhere on the west coast (San Francisco, LA, Portland, Seattle, etc) and you don't have earthquake-preparedness supplies somewhere in your house right now, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR. Go NOW to your Safeway, Ralph's, Fred Meyer's, whatnot, and pick up I'd say at least 15 liters of water and 3 days worth of non-perishable food per person in your house, blankets, and flashlights with batteries. GO NOW. I'm not joking. I'm quite serious. If Hurricane Katrina has taught us anything, it's that America is not equipped for a major natural disaster. If this most recent earthquake has taught us anything, it's that Japan is prepared in several important ways (infrastructure, quake education programs, emergency supplies), yet the government still hasn't been able to do everything for everyone immediately. If the Mayans have taught us anything, it's that we are living in End Times, and the closer we get to 2012 we should really be expecting more earthquakes, tsunami, and floods. I am convinced San Francisco is next and won't be surprised if it hits in 2011.

Alright, with that out of the way... So in the afternoon on Friday March 11, 2011, I was sitting at my desk in the teacher's room at school. Earlier in the day I had taught two really fun lessons to 1st year students, we had practice "ordering at a fast food restaurant" conversations. I was studying Japanese when around 245 or 3pm there was shaking. I look up and one of the teachers says, oh, its an earthquake. Then the shaking started getting a LOT more intense, and everyone jumped into action. "Get the students into the gym!" "Turn on the TV!!" "Get away from the windows!" My instinct was to duck under a table but apparently duck and cover is not something that is taught in Japan?? Anyway, the shaking went on for a good 4-ish minutes, although did not ever become too severe that anything fell over. It went on long enough that I had several conversations about how long it was going on for and how it was so weird it was so long. By the time it was over all the students had gathered in the gym and they were all accounted for, some of them were pretty shaken up but a lot of them were just pretty amused by it (as was I, once I confirmed that all the students were fine).

I went back to the teacher's room and basically spent the rest of the afternoon watching the news. As soon as it became clear to me that it was a really, really huge earthquake, I thought it would be wise to email home, which I did, and my mom was certainly glad to hear from me. Backstory/anecdote: about a week into my study abroad year in Kyoto two years ago, there was a pretty big earthquake in Hokkaido. I got some extremely alarmed emails from my parents, asking if I was alright. But since Kyoto is nowhere near Hokkaido, not only was I more than alright, I didn't even know there had been an earthquake. "If there is an earthquake, you need to tell us that you are ok!" "Alright, IF there is an earthquake, I will tell you that I am ok, but in the meantime, YOU need to learn some Japanese geography. Why don't you know where I live???"

So Niigata, on the map, does seem pretty close to Miyagi, where the epicenter was, as well as Fukushima and Iwate, where the tsunami damage was enormous. But ! Niigata has the benefit of being on the sea of Japan side of the country, as well as being separated from those three prefectures by some huge mountain ranges. So while the earthquake was 8.9 at the epicenter it was only 4-5 in Niigata. Throughout the afternoon we watched in horror footage of the earthquake shaking offices and homes, and the tsunami rolling in and pushing cars, trucks, boats, and buildings out of its way. There was a fire in Odaiba in Tokyo that was put out pretty quickly. There was an auditorium in Tokyo where the roof caved in. There was an oil rig in Chiba that caught on fire, and then the fire started to spread (they have long since put it out). I am sick of watching these scenes of destruction, so I am not going to post any links to videos, but CNN news and BBC news are pretty great standards of professional international journalism right now. (All weekend I have been getting almost more information from those sites than from the Japanese news, which seems to be doing a pretty good job at showing the same footage of tsunami destruction and a pretty poor job of accurately portraying the recent developments at the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. More on this in a little bit.)

It was really remarkable flipping between facebook, twitter, and email on my phone all afternoon too. Don't tell me social media is useless, because I heard from very nearly everybody I know in the whole country over the course of the afternoon and evening. With the extreme exception of my friend Chuckie, who has been teaching English in Tome city in Miyagi prefecture outside of Sendai, and who I have been freaking out about all weekend. I am certain he doesn't have power, internet, or cell service, but beyond that.... I am praying for him and his family, as well as the thousands of others who are officially missing.

I had been planning on going to Niigata City on Friday evening by train, because my charity musical was set to open on Saturday night; additionally, this weekend was supposed to be the infamous Niigata City Sake Festival. However, the former has been postponed and the latter was cancelled, and besides, all the trains basically on Honshu were suspended for the day. (This proved to be a major problem for the hundreds of thousands of people in Tokyo who were stranded at work. There was news footage later in the day of thousands of people waiting to get on one bus, or hundreds of people waiting to use the pay phone.) But I was also becoming increasingly terrified of spending the weekend alone in Ojiya, so my friend Nick in Niigata City told me to just get in my car and come up to the city for the weekend anyway, despite how the natural disaster ruined all my fun plans.

Going to the city ended up being the best thing I could have done. There was a 6.7 aftershock at 4am on Saturday, that was based out of Tokamachi in Niigata, only about 18 kilometers from my town. It was a 5 in Ojiya and I believe a 4 in Niigata City, so I slept right through it and was woken after the fact by my Japanese cell phone's earthquake alarm. Had I been in Ojiya though I would have been terrified. When I got back to my apartment today I was wondering what damage there might be, and all that had happened was my snowboard and some books fell over. No big deal.

Saturday morning I talked to both of my parents, my supervisor, and one of the English teachers at my school. The first two were just glad to hear my voice and the latter two thought I made a good decision by going to a friend's place and not being alone. Later in the morning I met up with my friends Megan and Jennifer (who are also doing JET and in the musical and live in N.City). We watched the news for a while before deciding to engage in some retail therapy. Typical Americans, and Californians in particular (Megan is from LA). We headed to the huge mall in the city and it was packed. It was like, "what national disaster?" There were SO many people there. I got a pack of altoids, a green running t-shirt, and a pair of Converse.

Throughout the day on Saturday, I was continually checking the news on my phone. Around 330pm was when there was the first explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and since then they have been working continuously to stop any potential meltdown. Not sure yet how that has played out, in typical vague Japanese news reports, they covered the evacuation of cities along the coast in Fukushima but besides that, as far as I can tell, they aren't reporting any of the further developments at the power plant. CNN just told me that at the Daini plant as well there is the fear of a meltdown. LUCKILY, Niigata is separated by Fukushima by huge mountains....

Saturday night I met up again with Nick and some of his friends. One of his friends was in Koriyama in Fukushima and she was keeping him updated on her weekend. Her apartment was totally wrecked by the earthquake (and unaffected by the tsunami) and was experiencing tons of really big aftershocks. Sometime Saturday night she was evacuated to Aizu, a town as far west in Fukushima (and very close to Niigata) as you can get.

Today after a pretty hungover morning and late lunch I drove back to Ojiya. I am basically fine, mostly just worried about Chuckie and the rest of the Pacific Coast north of Tokyo. I keep thinking about something my mom told me, that she was inundated with phone calls and emails all day on Friday, everyone wanted to make sure I was ok. My facebook page also got some nice notes on it. I really appreciate all the concern people have shown towards me and to Japan in general... I definitely feel blessed that my earthquake experience, as close as I am somewhat to the destruction, has been relatively quiet. But many people have not been so lucky. Please donate, if you can, or at the very least just keep on top of the news as it unravels. And, get your own preparedness supplies ready!!!!!