My story comes firsthand from a friend who was trapped in Sendai when the earthquake and tsunami hit. She had just landed in Japan as a newly arrived JET programme participant and was excited to teach English in Japan for the first time. Her plane landed at the Sendai airport only an hour or so before the quake, and in a stroke of good luck, she somehow managed to take the train in the opposite direction of where she was supposed to go, and ended up heading much further inland than she needed to be.
Caught without a phone and unable to speak a word of Japanese — she was newly arrived, after all — she had absolutely no idea what to do. The day after the quake, I received a call from her worried parents — I hadn't even known she was supposed to fly in the day before — asking me whether I could try contacting her. I couldn't. Hours passed that felt like days, and days passed that felt like weeks. She had no access to a phone and clearly hadn't had time to register with the embassy or her local city ward office, so all we could do was wait. And wait we did. I posted messages on all of the messageboards I could find, put up an alert via Twitter and asked friends who were going up to the affected area to ask about a lost foreigner.
Four days later, right before my flight was scheduled to depart from Haneda, I received news from an anonymous person on the Person Finder. My friend was alive and had barely managed to escape being caught in the epicentre of the quake. Having heard all of the stories about the people who were scamming others and seeking to profit off their misery, I was sceptical at first, but the anonymous poster offered to set up a Skype meeting with her to prove it to me. I don't think I've ever felt more relieved in my life.
Her parents, of course, were relieved, but it was one of the most harrowing experiences I think they've ever been through — and for me too. While a lot of foreigners were going about their daily lives here in Tokyo, I was burdened with worrying about a girl who was only kilometres away from where the quake impacted most.
I don't know whether she ever will be able to get back to her normal life. She was scheduled to start teaching in Ishinomaki in April, but returned home at the bequest of her parents. The last time I talked to her, she said she doesn't know whether she will be able to return to Japan because all she can remember is being a newly arrived tourist being yelled at in confusing Japanese.
Perhaps not the most traumatic story of all, but one that impacted me personally.
No comments:
Post a Comment