Beginnings

Where was I at 2:46 p.m. on March 11?

I feel like that's a question that I've had to answer multiple times. When I went home to San Francisco for the rest of spring break, I fielded this inquiry each time someone asked me to donate — I would hesitate for a second, reluctant to give money to a cause that I know needs more than just dollars and yen to support it, that needs more than the goodwill of samaritans thousands of miles away. This second of hesitation, of course, almost always led to the solicitor admitting immediately that, "donating isn't necessary and I'm sorry for wasting your time," and I would feel guilty and dig through my pockets for a couple bucks. If I was with a friend, however, they'd usually grasp my shoulder reassuringly and mention something about how I had been there so it was a bit of a sensitive topic for me. San Franciscans are naturally curious, so this inevitably would lead to a curious look (at best) or an awkward, slightly invasive question (at worst).

Anyway, I digress.

When the first tremors of what would soon come to be known as the Great Tohoku Earthquake began, I was skyping with one of my best friends back home. After a year and a half of living in Tokyo and eighteen years of living in one of the most earthquake-prone cities on the West Coast, it takes more than a couple of shakes to spook me, and so I remained cross-legged on my bed, nonchalantly chatting with my friend as I waited for the ground to stop hiccuping. It didn't. Thirty seconds or so later, the earth suddenly had a coughing fit and things started rattling around — I could hear the glasses moving in the cabinets downstairs and a terrified housemate running outside. Worried about her, I jumped off the bed and ran outside to check on her, leaving my laptop open in the process and inadvertently treating my friend to the bone-chilling soundtrack of books and knick-knacks falling off my windowsill and crashing to the floor. When the tremors finally subsided after what felt like an eternity but probably was really only a couple of minutes, I went back into the house to assess the damage — there was none. I suppose we got off lucky because we live in a house rather than an earthquake-retrofitted high rise that is designed to sway with the movement of the ground.

As I headed cautiously up the stairs, my phone picked up wifi again and my twitter app went crazy with people asking whether I was okay and warning me that there was a tsunami quickly approaching the northern seaboard. I didn't have time to grasp the seriousness of the situation because just then, the second round of shaking began and I ran downstairs again to stand with my housemates. Though we had never discussed it before, the same thought was running through all our heads: We're riding this through together. And so we stood outside our gates until the shaking stopped and my housemates calmed down enough to go back inside. We would remain downstairs together late into the night, talking about whatever we could to distract us from the constant shaking — products of the incessant aftershock and the jishin-yoi that came with them —while half-listening to NHK in the background.

I found myself checking Twitter obsessively. I don't think I've ever refreshed it so many times in a day. Since the phone networks were down, the site became one of the ways I kept tabs on my friends and checked to see whether they were okay. I don't think it ever dawned on me just how large of a role Twitter would take in the next few days as Tokyoites began to see and comprehend the full extent of the situation. As someone who can read and speak Japanese passably but not natively, I hardly had the patience to weed through the sites that we were being told to refer to for information about the rolling blackouts that would be implemented — not that they were much help anyway since they didn't stick to schedule — or the train schedule changes that would be implemented in what turned out to be a sometimes-futile attempt to prevent said blackouts.

After a dinner of whatever we could scrounge up from the depths of our cabinets, a bit of freaking out about whether we actually had flashlights in the house and Skype calls home, sometime in the early hours of morning, I went up to my bedroom and attempted to sleep. Attempted should be the key word there, because with each and every bump or creak in the house, I found myself on edge, waiting for nature's Godot. I'm still waiting.