Part 2..

 

I bought myself a can coffee from a vending machine, purely as a gesture of comfort to myself, and wrapped my cold fingers around its warmth. I sat on the outside steps for a while then strolled back out to the main road. Coming out of that brightly lit space, I was at once struck by just how dark it was. There were no lights at all aside from the headlights of cars, and many of those were just on side lights since little traffic was moving. In the darkness there were hoards of people trudging wearily along the wide pavement (sidewalk), most in silence, like a thoroughly down-in-the-mouth sports crowd making their way home. I trudged right along with them. Walking was still better than sitting, yet I had even less idea of what I was going to do. I trudged on in the hope that something, possibly some magic, might somehow happen.

 

By now it was becoming apparent that my feet weren’t exactly on board with all of this and were starting to seriously voice their displeasure. My choice of footwear hadn’t been the greatest - an old, yet still underused pair of brogue-type leather shoes, a hangover from a past life when I taught at a University in the 90s, that I’d never really liked and had never really broken in. They had always cramped my feet, were unnecessarily hard and unforgiving in the soles and, crucially now, offered very little warmth. The only reason they’d got the nod that morning for the first time in an age was because they appeared to fit the bill for what might be appropriate in the otherwise alien (to me) environment of a business seminar at a multinational company. I guess I figured the most they’d have to deal with would be the short walk to and from the station. I’d not thought it through very far but I certainly didn’t anticipate them having to hold an end up in any kind of an olympic-style endurance event.

 

As I came to a junction I noticed that one lane of cars was actually moving, albeit at a rate of barely one a minute. It was the right-turn filter lane for a road going off towards the Tomei Tokyo to Nagoya expressway, 10km away a sign said. And that ran not too far to the north of where I lived... It was a mad idea, but caught in the quandary I figured it had to be worth a shot. I was also tussling with the dilemma of keeping my body temperature up by walking or seeking respite for my feet, and deciding the feet were in greater need at that point I resolved to try hitchhiking. Now, though hitchhiking is not common at all in Japan, I did have positive experience in that area. It had worked out surprisingly well for me on several occasions in the 90s over considerable distances and this felt like a good time to try and reconnect with that good fortune. So I crossed over the road and soon I was standing there at the turn, arm outstretched, thumb held gallantly aloft. My hitching nous was soon telling me though that I wasn't doing myself any favours with my positioning. Where I was standing was almost pitch black, a bit hard to avoid in the power outage gloom to be fair, but still it meant that cars were in the act of turning and I couln't be seen till the headlights actually hit me. Added to this there wasn't really any place for them to pull over either. 

 

So I walked about a hundred yards further on to where there was some kind of light, maybe from a factory. There was still not really any place to pull over but at least it was away from the junction and they would catch sight of me for a few, perhaps crucial, seconds as they approached. It was hopeless though and I soon knew it. I quickly realised there weren't in fact many cars. I kept affirming to myself the hitchhiker's mantra though that it would only take one, but for whatever reason none stopped. In fact it almost felt like that on seeing me some actually sped up, and in the miserable half hour I must have stood there, there was not even the sniff of a ride. I was thrown back to my hitching days of yore and how you get a fair sense if a ride is in the air or not. One time I stood on the exit ramp of the freeway going north out of Paris trying to get a ride up to the channel ports for 16 hours - hands down my longest ever hitchhiking wait. I recalled the no-go feel of 'the air' that time and this felt just the same.

 

Back walking along the road, my stomach was soon complaining again. It had been a long time, seemingly light years, since that innocent lunch in the NEC cafeteria, and any effect the doughy pastries had had was now gone too. Before long I noticed a convenience store up ahead, and though all the lights were off it looked like they were open. As I got nearer I saw there was indeed activity and I went in. What followed was really heartwarming. With the power out everything was dark in the usually garishly brightly-lit interior. The contrast was striking and it was bizarre to be in there under those circumstances, especially since they’re 24-hour so the lights are presumably never off. The few people inside were shopping by the light of their mobile phones, even calculating their own purchases and reporting them to the owners, an elderly husband and wife team. Bright faced, they were doing everything they could to help everyone and the wife, in the absence of a functioning cash register, was totting up purchases on an abacus illuminated by three or four customers holding up their phones. To see people so honestly and good-naturedly cooperating under such trying conditions was such a lovely thing to witness. And it’s so Japanese. 

 

People in other countries remarked to me after the event that with everything in such chaos there must have been looting. There doubtless would have been in many another country but there wasn’t here. And knowing Japan as I do, it never even occurred to me that there ever would be. It’s anathema to the Japanese psyche. Such circumstances as these are much more likely to bring to the fore an innate response to cooperate and work together for everyone’s benefit. 

 

I brought my purchases to the woman, a selection of mostly rice balls with other bits and pieces, including a copious amount of chocolate, and as she totted them up she asked me where I was headed. She grimaced slightly when I told her but didn’t lose her smile. As I turned to leave the man explained they had to quickly get rid of all the things in the fridges and thrust an extra couple of rice balls into my hand, along with a miniature bottle of scotch.

 

Back out on the road, after a short while the lights of the next station, Tsunashima, came into view, shimmering mirage-like up ahead like a port in a storm and I decided to use it as such. I can’t say I was hopeful that there would be any good news there on the train situation but I certainly needed a break. I had no plan of any kind, just go and sit in a hopefully slightly warmer, lighted place for awhile, put some food in my belly and rest up my weary cold feet, yet it still felt strangely comforting.

 

When I got there I went straight to the office, where I had the same old rigmarole conversation with a Toyoko line staff guy. As we were speaking, a pleasant-faced middle aged white woman walked up and stood there listening. When I finished she asked me what had been said - she evidently didn’t understand the Japanese - and I told her. She said she’d been there three hours already, and though her hope had been to get on a train or a bus, nothing at all had shown up in that time. Evidently from the States, we talked about our experiences of the day and briefly about what we were doing in Japan, it was a pleasant enough few minutes. She kept saying about how she’d heard there was going to be a train coming soon, despite what the staff guy had just said to me. That sounded like fantasy to me but said she was going to head back up to the platform anyway. I wished her luck.

 

I found a place to perch myself, a highish wall I had to hoist myself up onto but with a backrest, just outside the main exit and began tucking into my bag of goodies. It felt good to eat, even though it was all cold. In front of me a crowd of people were gathered, mainly at the bus stops, and there was a rumour of the imminent arrival of a bus bound for Yokohama. Having just left the still chokablock main road, I couldn’t feel too hopeful that anything would be getting in or going out anywhere anytime soon, but I really liked the idea sitting on a warm bus. That would certainly be a step up even if it was stationary so I decided to hang there a while and see if anything happened. After some 30 minutes, lo and behold, out of the gloom the vision of a bus emerged, but dismally it soon emerged too that it was going to Kawasaki station, the other way. Most of the long-suffering queue of people duly filed on though and away out of the station rotary area it went. In about 10 minutes yet another appeared, and, in accordance with the time-honoured tradition of Murphy’s Law of buses, hopes were dashed once more as it turned out this one was going to fucking Kawasaki station too. What remained of the queue boarded, it waited a few minutes then pulled away, and suddenly I was the only one there. That was probably the lowest point. I sat there staring straight ahead for what felt like a age, close to my wits end. I was cold, I was tired, my feet hurt, I was still only about halfway to Yokohama. It was now nearly 10pm, the cold, dark night was closing in and I was without shelter, even the prospect of any.

 

I remember pulling my knees up to my chest, rolling myself into a ball in my cold, concrete seat and thinking ‘well, at least I have a roof over my head here’, when suddenly from the steps up to the platform away to my right, I heard the American woman’s voice.

“Heyyyyy”, she yelled, “There’s a train coming!!!”. I couldn’t believe my ears.

 

I leapt to my feet and ran up the steps like an Olympic sprinter. Sure enough, there it was, like a Old Testament Biblical vision. There was a fucking train! And it stopped. In the destination box was written ‘kaiso’, ‘out of service’, but I quickly heard a railway employee say it was going to Yokohama. In retrospect it must’ve been one they were moving for some reason but I didn’t give that a second thought at the time. Whatever, there it was, all lit up, no one on it and real as can be. What a welcome sight! The two of us and two or three other people gratefully boarded, along with a bunch of railway staff. It was wonderfully warm inside and in no time at all we were zipping merrily away down the line towards Yokohama. As we rode along on this warm, bright train though I couldn’t help feel for all the scores of people bleakly and obliviously trudging along the cold blackness of the road, not 200m away to our left.

 

I did wonder even at the time whether it was really happening, if I hadn’t fallen into some kind of delirium. l’ve actually wondered it more since, especially as I’ve had it reiterated to me many times that because of the strict regulations regarding the role of the system computer in disaster scenarios, absolutely zero trains moved in or out of the Tokyo Metropolitan and surrounding areas that night. So, this one I’ve come to call the ‘maboroshi-sen’. ‘Maboroshi’ means ‘phantasm’, ‘vision’, ‘illusion’, the kind of miracle manifestation that’s either so wondrous or so commonplace yet so unlikely that you question whether or not it’s actually real. To tell the truth I’ve had a number of experiences in my life that could qualify as this. I wonder if others have too. 

 

As we pulled into Yokohama though, this train was certainly real enough for me and such thoughts were the furthest from my mind. One of the staff guys on the train asked us where we were trying to get to. I told him Samukawa, north part of Chigasaki. He quickly told me I might be in luck as he’d heard that one private single line, the Sotetsu-sen, was running a skeleton service and that would get to me Shonandai in the northern part of Fujisawa city, an area I knew. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. It would still leave me a little short of home, but much closer than central Yokohama. The American woman, whose name I never knew, wished me luck, and giving me a big hug she headed off.

 

Yokohama station at 11pm that night was another level of refugee camp and a very strange sight to behold. As I headed through the main concourse and over towards the Sotetsu-line gates, the people I passed looked utterly bewildered and shellshocked. Many had harvested for themselves cardboard boxes and were uneasily settling down on them for an uncomfortable night. There was a police presence, and with everyone’s humanity and vulnerability to the fore, for once in my life I felt the vibe of the police to be primarily one of looking after people. I saw some casually shooting the breeze, offering encouragement and advice, some were even handing out blankets. Outside the station exit though the city was shrouded in almost total gloom, something I’d never seen before or indeed since. When I arrived at Sotetsu a staff guy confirmed they were operational, though, there was only one more and I was just in time. It would get me into Shonandai, the terminal, around midnight. What a relief that was! Being at Yokohama would’ve been of no more benefit than any of the other stations I’d been at so far, I'd still be a long way from home. There it was waiting anyway, doors open welcomingly, and I duly got on. I thought back to that dicey ten minutes at Tsunashima station prior to hearing the American woman yelling that a train was coming. It already felt like a lifetime away. There I was sitting on this nice warm train soon to start moving and whisk me out of there, yet everyone else was stuck out in the cold. I felt weirdly blessed in a sea of the damned. Alone in the carriage, the first thing I did was take off my damn shoes and rub my feet, cold and bloody sore. I put them to the heater blasting hot air from beneath the seat opposite, it was an indescribably wonderful feeling. I was the only one in the carriage for a long time. There are a lot of stations on that line though and it did fill up a bit along the way. When we arrived at the end of line quite a few people got off.

 

We arrived on time, not surprisingly, at 12.01. I walked outside Shonandai station looking for the taxi rank. I had no idea exactly how far it was across country to Samukawa, or how much it would cost, but that was the last thing on my mind. I knew it wasn’t walkable but guessed it couldn’t be all that far. The first thing that struck me when I got outside was how dead the place was, but at least there was power there. I walked around the corner to where I was told the taxi rank was and suddenly there were a load of people, all of them in the taxi line. To my dismay this was fully 50m or more long, and, disconcertingly, not a taxi in sight. My heart sank a little, but even though there were no taxis here, I reasoned, if this many people are in the line then there must be some out there on the road. All I could do was join the back of it so I did. It was heartwarming to see a taxi show up within a few minutes, though I then overheard someone say he recognized it from the license plate from before and it seemed it was the only one running. Bollocks, I thought. In about another 10 minutes the same taxi returned again, and in that way, ever so slowly but steadily, we edged forwards. For the first time ever that night I witnessed people in a taxi line in Japan asking each other where they were going in order to share the cab. That made the line disappear a little quicker but it was still after 2am before I finally reached the head of it. In all the time I'd been waiting no one had joined behind me, so I was the only one left.

 

The ten minute mark passed, no taxi. That soon turned into twenty and I began wondering if the driver hadn’t gone to bed. I wouldn’t have blamed him to be honest. I stood there alone in the dead silence for a while considering what my next move could possibly be if no taxi showed up. I was freezing by this point too and had resorted to stamping each foot in turn to try and keep the circiulation up. Then I heard voices, as a group of people suddenly appeared out of nowhere and joined the queue. They looked like they’d just left a bar. I told them I had a strong feeling there weren’t any taxis anymore but we all stood there nevertheless. One tried to call one on his cellphone, with no success but at least it confirmed the phone network was back up again. As they talked amongst themselves, I heard the first time that terrible things had happened upcountry in the Tohoku area, how they had been hit by several tsunamis and that the situation there was grave. I didn’t realise at this point however just how grave.

 

About 20 meters behind us was a police box. These are an outpost of the local police station, often a simple concrete box of a room, located in places like train stations where many people gather. They are all too often conspicuously unoccupied by police however, and that night was no exception. The guys who’d just showed up were looking over there with concern, and in the glow of a kerosene heater it looked like a couple of people were sitting inside. One went over to check and came back saying there was a frail elderly couple in there, just sitting keeping warm. He said they’d told him they had no idea how they were going to get home. Two of the women went straight over to see how they were.

 

Within a few minutes though the sound of a car coming suddenly broke the silence. We all watched apprehensively as headlights appeared on the far side of the rotary area, but soon it became evident from the whine of the engine that it was a small ‘kei’ car (‘light’ - 550cc engine), not a taxi, and spirits quickly fell. As it approached, I remembered I’d seen it a bit earlier, when I was in the middle of the line. It had come around to the taxi rank and slowed down as if looking for someone before taking off again. This time though the car stopped, outside of the prescribed ‘taxis only’ area, and the driver got out. He shouted over to us asking if anyone needed a ride. The man who’d found the old couple told him about them and headed off to the police box to tell them. The driver then asked me where I was going. When I said Samukawa his reaction was “Oh God, that’s miles away! Come on, I’d better take you.”

 

I couldn’t believe my ears. However, though I was first in line I told him it was the old couple whose need was greater and they should take precedence. The man and the two women soon emerged with them. 
"Where are they going?" shouted the driver, to which the man shouted back some place I didn't know. I asked the other guys where that was and they replied near Enoshima. Damn, I thought, completely the other way from me. I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't sink a little bit, or even quite a lot. I watched as they slowly made their way towards us. They did look very frail indeed, and older than I had anticipated, probably late 80s. They were ushered forward towards the car, and though it took a minute to get them in they were soon safely seated in the back. As for me, my thoughts had already turned towards the police box. I was more than ready to settle down in there in its cosy-looking red glow for what was left of the night when the driver shouted over to me “Come on then! I can take you too, get in the front”.

Wow!

Once more there I was, suddenly and impossibly plucked from what had looked like abject hopelessness. I knew I'd made it this time. I put my hands together, closed my eyes and gently spoke the words ‘thanks!’, and felt a huge grin spread across my face.

 

Inside the tiny box of a car, the powerful little heater was now blasting warm air directly at both my legs and face, very welcome indeed, and a sudden reminder of just how chilled I’d got standing out there for what had now become nearly three hours. Talking to the old couple, they told me how they had gone into the Ginza area of Tokyo that day to get their wedding rings resized, to the very same jewellers where they’d had them made 60 years before. They were on their way home on the train when the quick hit. They said it was the first time they’d been into Tokyo in more than 20 years and laughed about the fact they’d happened to choose this particular day. They both had such lovely bright eyes and were just so sweet, and in spite of their ordeal were in good spirits. It was a pleasure to ride with them the 15 minutes to their house in the south part of Fujisawa. The woman told how ever so grateful she was for the warmth of that kerosene stove in the police box, that it had ‘saved’ them. I asked if the police had seen them and she said no, no one had so much as been in till the man just moments ago. I asked if they’d tried to ask for help. No, they replied, they didn’t want to worry or burden anyone. And how about contacting the main police station on the phone there? ‘Oh no’, she said, they didn’t want to inconvenience them, ‘not on such a torrid day when they must be so so busy’. When I asked how long they had been in there she said ‘oh, about five hours’. ‘Hmm, maybe four’, chipped in the man, ‘Yes, only about four’, said the woman.

 

After dropping them off, I told the heavenly angel disguised as the driver that I thought I’d seen him drive by earlier one time and I asked if he’d just been driving around doing this all night. He told me he’d run more than 20 people home, that he’d been on the road five hours. I was amazed.

“Well, what else are they going to do?”, he lamented. “Poor, poor people”.

He confirmed there had been only one taxi running since sometime before midnight and questioned what the matter with all the drivers was, if only from a financial point of view. I ventured to ask him for news of the tsunamis up north but all he would say was ‘aa, taihen da, taihen da yo’, ‘it’s tough, really tough’.

 

Soon we arrived in Samukawa at my apartment and he dropped me off. Without ceremony, and absolutely refusing my modest token monetary offer (though he did reluctantly accept a handshake) he quickly drove away into the night. It was just after 3.30am.

 

Good old Samukawa! I’d somehow made it. I stood there in the cold night air hardly daring to believe that I was actually home when I got a shock that jolted me out of my stupor. When I turned towards my building I saw that up in my third floor apartment the lights were on! WTF??!! How could it be?? This was impossible. I lived there alone, only I had keys, and the lights wouldn’t have been on that morning so they couldn’t have been left on. I quickened my pace across the front parking lot, and looking up at my veranda as I went I could see not only that, but that both the heavy patio doors were wide open too. This was as disconcerting as it was inexplicable and my heart began to pound as I climbed the outside steps. Could it be that someone, possibly family at home worried at my lack of contact, had alerted the authorities, and that for some reason the local police had broken in? Or, unlikely as it was in Japan but maybe, just maybe, there was an intruder? That last frenzied thought flashed across my addled brain just as I hit the outside corridor, but when I got to my door and tried the handle it was locked and seemingly undisturbed.

 

Cautiously, heart thumping, I opened it up. Sure enough, the patio doors were wide open and an unwelcomely chilly breeze was blowing in, and my kitchen light was on. I went in, gingerly at first, and looked around. There were no police, certainly no intruders, and no evidence there’d ever been either. Relieved that there wasn’t a more troubling reason and that the wilder scenarios I’d just concocted on the stairs had proved unfounded, I now surveyed the unholy mess before me. Just about everything that had been on anything had ended up on the floor. A CD rack had toppled forward and dropped its considerable cargo onto the living room carpet, along with everything on top of it. In the kitchen a big crystal had fallen from the windowsill into the sink, landing on and cracking my two favourite plates, one irreparably, though other than that there wasn’t any actual damage. Fortunately all my musical instruments were away in their cases and they were safe.

 

The explanation for how the kitchen light was on turned out to be quite simple. The rack with the toaster oven on the top of it must have got rocked so much that the oven had whacked back against the wall, inadvertently hitting the switch. It was easily identifiable as the culprit since it was still resting against it. The patio doors too had not been clipped shut and the sheer power of the shaking must have simply rocked them open, knocking out both screen doors in the process. Those must have snapped out quite quickly though since luckily neither frame had buckled.

 

It was mostly just a case of standing things up again so I had a quick tidy up and soon it was back to normal. I made myself a cup of tea, the average UK person’s standard response to most crises, and sat there reflecting on the day, the mad adventure it had become, and the extraordinary series of events that had somehow carried me home. In the coming days, as I began to swap stories with people, I was to realise just how extraordinary it all was. No one could believe I’d got on even one train that night, let alone two. The prevailing wisdom was, as it still is, that no trains ran anywhere in the whole area that night. No one I knew who lived any distance out of Tokyo had been able to make it home, not even Stewart. He’d ended up walking all the way from NEC, a serious distance, one almost comparable to mine, and it had taken him till the afternoon of the next day.

“I’ve always wanted to do that actually, to scout that out“, he quipped, stoic as ever, when we spoke by phone.

“I mean, you never know when a major earthquake might hit or something“.

 

Then I logged onto Facebook and waiting for me was a mass of messages, from all across the world. Mostly it was one huge wave of love, and it made me quite giddy. There was no little concern too, understandably made more acute by my enforced 10-hour silence. I realised I had some work to do here before I could even consider sleep. The adrenaline was still coursing though so it’s unlikely I could have slept anywayand diligently I got back to as many as I could, soon exchanging messages with some in real time. All of this gave way to a very strange, hard to define emotion. There was some kind of euphoric sense - the heart wide open, the feeling a strange mix of the effervescence I used to feel at Christmas time as a young child with a pure gratitude for having been somehow extricated against all odds, Frodo and Sam-style following the destruction of The Ring, from a most precarious and hostile wasteland and returned unscathed to the familiar place, from whence the journey had begun.

 

This warm and fuzzy semi-reverie was soon rudely shattered though when I switched on the TV and saw for the first time footage of the tsunamis in the Tohoku area. To this day I cannot get my head around it all, even despite visiting one of the worst hit areas as a volunteer a few months later. One of the most tragic things that’s ever happened in my lifetime that I felt any real connection to was the Aberfan Disaster in South Wales in 1966, when a water-saturated coal slurry tip suddenly gave way and slid down a mountainside engulfing an elementary school and killing 144 people, the majority of them children. At that time South Wales was a tight-knit industrial mostly working class community and we could all relate to what happened there. All the kids who died were my age. I was old enough to grasp what had happened and it really captured my young imagination. But now there were stories coming out of Tohoku telling that today they’d suffered a hundred or more Aberfans. Altogether some 15,000 people lost their lives, 2500 more are still listed as missing and 122,000 homes were destroyed. It was and continues to be totally mind-boggling.

 

I had just experienced surely the most vividly memorable day of my life, where for the only time ever I entertained the idea that I might be about to die, and in a very horrifically violent way. Then I’d endured a physically gruelling, emotionally challenging 10-hour adventure experience getting myself home, including a scenario where it had appeared increasingly likely I’d have to sleep outside in close to zero temperatures and would likely have find a way of preventing myself from freezing to death. Yet in the light of all this horror I could not help but conclude that in actuality I and everyone around me, my friends, my community, this whole Kanto area of Japan, had got off incredibly lightly.

 

I got to bed at 6am that morning, light breaking outside, the adrenaline rush still still hardly abating. In many ways this was just the start of a very dark and uncertain period that was brought down upon us all. The explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant were still 12 hours or so away, still in store too the some 1000 aftershocks that registered at magnitude 4 and higher over the next month alone. We all lived for most of that year with emergency backpacks at the ready by our doors, though I frequently found myself raiding mine for batteries, candles and toilet paper.

 

The shaking just went on and on, for months, on every level, inside and out. But what happened from here is another story. For now, I just want to keep focus on the day itself, March 11th. 

Every anniversary I will light a candle. I will sit in awed silence, contemplating how in that instant of unfathomable tragedy so many lives were stuffed out, and how many more were forever changed. It truly is beyond unimaginable.

 

Truly, by the Grace of God go we.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT

In response to a few comments and feedback received I'm adding a couple of anecdotes from after the event.

 

The next day I woke up just before noon and one of the first things I did was call to get confirmation that my Saturday gig, a Celtic Wind show with Yuko at the Tokyo foreign press club (FCCJ,) was off. To my surprise, they told me it was very much on. This meant getting on trains again and heading back into deepest central Tokyo, nervous that I might face a similar journey back to the one I'd just endured if there was any more disruption to the rail system. I was told that the JR Tokaido line train, the only one I would need, was running so about 3.30 that afternoon I duly set off with no little trepidation back to Tokyo. There was hardly anybody on the train. When I arrived Yuko was already there and she and the front desk staff were looking at images of the exploding Fukushima nuclear power station on the TV. In the light of this development they now decided they would in fact be closing at once, so the gig would now not be going ahead. I must say that despite a journey of more than an hour, my main feeling was one of relief, and not just because of the precarious and ever-shifting train situation. Aftershocks were happening all the time and the idea of having to spend some 4 hours on the 20th (top) floor of an older building where even the slightest shaking would’ve been horrendous wasn't exactly enticing. They paid us and I hightailed it back to Chigasaki at once. 

Once outside, rather than take the train from nearby Yurakucho, I decided for no good reason to walk the half mile or so down to Shinbashi station, where I could get one train all the way home. The always bustling Tokyo streets were almost totally deserted, a very surreal sight. As I was hurrying along lost in my thoughts, I vaguely registered a man and two young girls coming the other way. As we passed I glanced briefly up and thought one of the girls looked like someone I knew. Then, a few seconds later from behind me came a voice..“Paul?”

I quickly turned around and there was my old bandmate, bass player Ten, and his two daughters Kana-chan and and Mai-chan from Hiroshima days. It’s always a rarity to run into anybody in Tokyo but in these circumstances this was beyond chance. It turned out they had come up for the weekend and had been in the air when the earthquake hit the day before. They had made the decision to still going to go through with their weekend and there they were. I hadn't seen them in a few years and we shared a few minutes of excited conversation, agreeing we must meet in Hiroshima soon. Ten was already battling agressive cancer at this point, which I knew, and aside from a vision of him I sadly was barely able to recognise, this was the last time I’d see him alive.

You can see from the photograph here how high the tsunamis were that hit the Tohoku region from the red line on this, the Sony building in Ginza, Tokyo. Yuri told me on the Sunday that after she got home from her adventure at the beauty salon, she had gone to a neighbourhood restaurant on the Kamakura seafront where a number of friends had gathered. Looking out over the ocean from the second floor panoramic plate glass window, they suddenly saw that the ocean had gone out, leaving the sea bottom exposed. Japanese in general are very well versed in disaster protocol, such are the natural disasters that all too regularly afflict this country, and they were aware that this was a precursor to a possible tsunami. The south coast was under a tsunami warning too so just in case they decided they'd better relocate to the roof garden on top of the building, two floors above the restaurant, and watch from there. As it turned out, sometime later the ocean just came back in, to look like it always looks, and if there was any tidal wave it was minimal. However, had the ocean come in to the extent it did in Tohoku, that vantage point would not have saved them. People on the roofs of six storey buildings there were tragically swept away.

In 1923 Japan was hit by what is known as the Great Kanto Earthquake. That day 150 people died when a tsunami crashed in on that very beach. The land close to the shore, where the two-storey apartment Yuri lived in then and that we would soon both live in for the next four years was located, was under 8m of water that day, some 5 feet above the level of our roof. 

Though a lot trains did run that Saturday, albeit haphazzardly, and I managed to get home without incident, by the Sunday it appeared that most had stopped again. Also, I was shocked on the Sunday morning to find many empty shelves at my local supermarket. It suddenly dawned on me that living there I really didn’t have much of a support network in the event of an emergency situation like this. Yuri and I chatted about everything that night and decided to extricate ourselves for a little while and watch developments from afar. The alarming Fukushima situation played no little part in that decision.

I had a date with Stewart and his corporate seminar again on the Monday and I duly showed up at Chigasaki station for a 7am departure. However, I arrived to find the steel roller doors on the main entrance to the platforms were down. A sign said all JR trains were suspended until further notice and for sure nothing would run that day. I can't say I was totally surprised. I called Stewart to tell him, he told me the seminar was already canceled. Relieved, I repaired to the Starbucks on the elevated deck section around the station and despite the chilly morning air I sat myself at an outside table overlooking the activity, or lack of it. Many people commute from here to jobs in Tokyo and Yokohama and there were a lot of people standing around, all uncertain of what to do. There was the longest bus line I've ever seen. The Sotestu line from Shonandai was the only train running into Yokohama and this bus line had formed at the bus stop for there, with one scheduled every 25 minutes. It was quite a sight to behold. Snaking for several hundred meters all around the rotary bus center area on ground level in front of the station, it then went up, down and around the many stairways and walkways in the station complex, before winding back down again, with hoards more commuters showing up all the time. Unable to give themselves permission not to try and get to work, people were stoically just standing in it, in full knowledge of the complete hopelessness of their predicament. All the while frequent aftershocks, accompained by the inevitable intensely irritating alarm, rattled the whole structure. Surveying this scene with my foreign resident detachment, the temptation to stand up at the rail overlooking it all and bellow at the top of my lungs "FOR FUCK SAKE, JUST FUCKING GO HOME!! BE WITH YOUR FAMILIES!!" was almost overwhelming.                                                 

I did take my own advice though, and early that evening Yuri and I headed off to Hiroshima. With JR not running we needed help getting to the train and some friends gave us a ride to Shonandai. It was odd to be back there again so soon. This time it was the other way we were headed, to the Shinkansen station in Yokohama, however, with the service disrupted we just barely made it. Another surreal experience was in store, though this time one that made us smile. That day, or maybe the one before, the French Embassy had issued advice to all its citizens to evacuate the Tokyo area. Since we had arrived with seconds to spare, we had to quickly jump on the Shinkansen. We entered the front carriages, when our reserved seats were towards the rear, and subsequently walked almost the entire length of the train. It was full of French people, and in carriage after carriage all we were hearing was French.                                                                                                                  

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My apartment in Samukawa was new, one of six fairly smart units in a three-storey building, in a neighbourhood of older houses where the same people had probably lived for years. Next door-but-one was a house with a raft of bonsai trees in the front yard, no doubt the pride and joy of an older, obviously retired guy, who was almost always out there puttering about. He would nod a minimalist greeting at me whenever I passed by without any change in his expression and in the two years I lived there he had never uttered so much as one word. However one day not long before I left in the May to move into Yuri's place in Kamakura, he suddenly up and spoke. "How was the shaking up there the day of the quake?" he asked me. I explained I'd not been there but that it had been a bit of a mess and he quipped, "Aa, yappari (as I thought). That used to be a pond, that land. So no wonder."

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