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.                                                                                                                  

                                                                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                                                                                                        

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."

                                                                                                        XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

 

One Saturday night about a month ago we had a bit of a rude awakening here in Japan, even if most of us were probably still up. It was an earthquake, not unusual in itself, we get them all the time, but this one was a bit different. It came like a eerie spectre from the past, an unwelcome visit from an all too familiar and fearsome adversary. It happened on February 13th, at 11pm.. (what is it about 3s and 1s?), it was uncommonly strong with a side to side motion, it lasted for a good couple of minutes and was felt across almost the whole eastern side of the country. The rude bit was that it was uncannily similar in character to the massive earthquake that struck here on March 11th 2011, the infamous `311’ that brought the tragedy of the huge tsunamis, the destruction of the Fukushima power plant and all that, and brought untold misery with a loss of life that truly shocked the whole world. In fact, it was later categorised as an aftershock of that quake, 10 years on.

 

For many years in Japan, certainly ever since I first arrived - 36 years and counting, we’ve heard tell of the long-predicted ’big one’. Despite the havoc wrought by 311, that wasn’t it, we were told. That one is still out there lurking somewhere in our collective future. That’s not to say we’re all living on the edge here, even though in a very real sense we surely are. But for the most part we all just deal with it, partly through denial, partly through resignation. Whenever the shaking starts though and it goes on a bit long, all kinds of things start running through your mind. You start eyeing your dining table, should you be thinking about ducking down under there, or how long you’re going to wait before you make that mad dash for the door. 

 

As for myself, at 11pm the other Saturday night I was one of many still up. I had no intention of going to bed any time soon. I’d just resurfaced after a short nap and was gearing up to watch the UK football well into the night. A couple of hours later I went out for some fresh air between games and I quickly noticed that in almost all the houses in my usually early-to-bed neighbourhood there were lights on. Were people unsure whether to lay down and shut their eyes in case there was more, I wondered? Or were minds perhaps just a little too overactive to allow them to even contemplate sleep? Who knows. But what is sure is the tragic events of exactly 10 years ago traumatised all of us who were involved in them to any degree and it doesn’t take much for those feelings to kick in.

 

In early 2011 Facebook was already a thing and lots of family and friends in different parts of the world, mainly around Japan, Wales/UK and Hawaii, were on it. The whole world soon saw the horrific tsunami footage, many hours before I did as it turned out, since I was trying to get myself home from a city of 25 million where the infrastructure was paralysed. The cellphone network quickly went down, preventing us from posting anything in the immediate aftermath and indeed for several more hours into the night. For good measure too my own phone was soon battery-dead. Many were understandably concerned, unsure as they were exactly where in Japan in relation to what was happening and I was and unable to determine if I was likely safe or not. It was only once I got back to my place in the early hours of the morning and had wi-fi that I got to see and respond to the mountain of waiting messages.

 

In the days and weeks that followed everything became dreadfully uncertain, due largely to the precarious situation around the Fukushima nuclear reactor. There was the apparently imminent threat of serious radiation exposure, many foreign embassies were on high alert, giving daily bulletins and on the verge of distributing iodine tablets to their citizens, the vexing and deliberately obtuse approach to the issue on the part of the Japanese government meant that no reliable information was forthcoming. We were also being remorselessly hit daily, and nightly, by powerful after-shock after powerful after-shock. The worst thing about this was the actual alarm itself - a jarring, demonic tone eerily reminiscent of the theme from 'Jaws', perfectly designed to set nerves on edge and guaranteed to penetrate rudely into any level of sleep. With risks and tensions so high, it seemed this was invariably activated at the slightest of murmurs from the ground below us. It often caused more anxiety than the quake itself and many of them we didn’t even feel. Conversely though there were many that we did.

 

With all the attention that was on us, some friends from outside Japan asked if I would recount in detail my personal experience of that day. It was something I wanted to do but never actually found myself able to at the time, I don’t know why exactly. I like to write though and that for sure was a most, perhaps even the most, unforgettable day of my life. I suspect too though that despite my feelings that my life had been endangered, and with good cause, when compared with everything that happened just 250 miles north of here, the truth was I had got off lightly, and in the light of that it felt strange, almost inappropriate, to focus on just what had happened to me. So as well as triggering in many of us cellular memories that are the legacy of our experience of that fateful day, the quake the other Saturday night also triggered in me a desire to finally write about it. It’s still all very vivid, I remember it all.

 

The red line shows the height of the tsunamis that hit the Tohoku area on March 11th, 2011.

 

Here goes.

 

That Friday, March 11th 2011, ‘three one one’ as it’s come to be known here, I found myself at the headquarters of the Japanese multinational corporation NEC. This is located in Musashikosugi, to all intents Tokyo but administratively in Kawasaki, but such is the relentless extent of the urban sprawl that just looking at it you couldn’t hazard a guess at where one ends and the other begins. That I was there at all was an odd chance. I hadn’t ever been there before and I haven’t since. I was taking part in a business seminar, definitely not my bag as just about anyone who knows me well will vouch. I’m not exactly a fan of the whole concept but nevertheless, on that day there I was. I was helping out a new acquaintance, Stewart, the seminar leader and former US marine with a history of service at the highest levels of the military but now based in Japan. He had found me through our mutual love of Celtic, in his case Scottish, music and had unexpectedly invited me to contribute, based upon what criteria though I can’t quite recall now. His 4-Day seminar was for employees of NEC who would soon, come April, find themselves flung into international postings across the outside world and this was part of their orientation.

 

The NEC complex comprises two 45-floor tower blocks. Built in the early part of this century, it is, or certainly was at the time, the very model of state-of-the-art building code construction, codes that are very strictly implemented since earthquakes occur here more than anywhere else. We, a group of 50-70 people, were gathered in a large, airy seminar room on the 7th floor.

 

As fate would have it, at lunch that day about an hour before the quake was to strike, the talk was about earthquakes, specifically a fairly strong one that had occurred just two days earlier on the Wednesday. I wasn’t there that day, I was down to partake just that Friday and the following Monday. Such occurrences are fairly commonplace in Japan, and even though it had been quite shaky shaky, when it stopped everyone just got right back on with whatever they were doing as they always do - no big deal. I listened as our team of Stewart, Brendhan - an Australian guy in a similar role to me - and a Filipino lady whose name I have unfortunately forgotten talked about how freaky it had been for them, exacerbated by being so far off the ground. I knew this phenomenon well. A few years earlier I lived in a tower block in Ikejiri in central Tokyo and up in our 13th floor eyrie we’d feel everything, even news broadcast helicopters passing overhead. We would certainly feel any tremors, many of which were barely perceptible at ground level. I understand of course that the building codes of necessity prescribe that structures must be designed to allow considerable movement and sway. Even so, I was always grateful, particularly in the light of what was about to unfold on this day, that we never had to experience anything major up there.

 

We had been back in the room for our afternoon session about an hour when, at 2:46 - a time that has gone down in infamy - the quake hit. It began like a fade in. I was sitting with Brendhan towards the back of the room, Stewart was standing and speaking at the front. The movement was noticeable side to side and concern amongst people in the room became quite apparent once the shaking passed the 20-second mark and was clearly intensifying. Plastic water bottles on the long tables we were all seated at soon began falling over and rolling onto the floor, heads began to turn every which way, particularly up. Stewart however was a very calm presence at the front. He put his arms up in the air then brought them slowly down, palms facing downwards, in a gesture to remain calm. Then he walked slowly towards the door to his right and opened it. Still in orientation seminar leader mode he remarked, “In an earthquake always make sure you have your escape route if you can“.

 

By now though the shaking was reaching a pretty violent pitch and showing no signs of letting up. Accompanying it, also reaching a crescendo, was an outrageous din that Animal from The Muppets would have been proud of. This had two aspects. One was a kind of a deep bass drum and floor tom rumbling with some high-pitched hi-hat creaking mixed in, the other a mad, impossibly loud brassy cymbal jingle-jangle flooding in through the now open door. At this point a dark suited, officious-looking little man, an employee of the company and senior in age, appeared in the doorway. Judging by his demeanour, chest pushed forwards, nose in the air, he looked like he was well used to wielding authority and wouldn't have looked out of place with a little Hitler moustache. Suddenly putting his arms out, palms facing us, he sternly bellowed the words, in English, ‘STAY! Going out, NO!!’, like he was talking to a dog. Stewart’s reaction was to just stare across at him for a moment, then turn back to us and calmly say “If this continues for another 10 seconds guys, we’re out of here, okay?”.

 

The ten seconds passed, everything kept right on rocking, and despite the little man’s frantic protestations a substantial number of us leapt up and charged past him, out of the door and out into the concourse area. Here the jingle-jangling was twice as loud and almost deafening. It was coming from the wells of the multiple elevators, where 45 floors worth of heavy chains were doing the maddest crazy dance, just the visual of this was totally bizarre. All the while the floor was shifting crazily beneath our feet. Even with our arms now involuntarily out sideways to try and maintain balance, any attempt to walk in a certain direction proved futile. We were doing our best to steer a course for the stairways, dead ahead slightly to the right, but despite all best efforts we were actually going backwards to the left. Somewhere over the din I could hear the little man incessantly screaming and yelling like a thoroughly disobeyed Sergeant Major, his imaginary moustache dislodged and unscrupulously trampled.

 

Through all this craziness, one thing was very curious. There was no panic. I remember well feeling absolutely calm, awake and clear-headed, and in retrospect all those around me seemed to be too. I recall us laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of our predicament, particularly our near vain attempts to move forward across the shifting floor yet finding ourselves going the other way, like we were on a ride at some theme park. I didn’t cognise this at all even in myself at the time though. It all seemed perfectly natural, like things do in a dream. It only struck me later while sitting on a wall outside in the courtyard area, the quake having abated and my body now doing some shaking. 

 

I think this is probably a common experience whenever our very existence is threatened. Like a lifeboat the fight/fight response is launched and the adrenaline glands begin to pump, left-brain logical thought process becomes suspended, fear is temporarily banished and we suddenly find ourselves spontaneously able to perform almost superhuman feats of courage and daring beyond what would be possible in ‘normal’ mode. It’s almost as if we’re witnessing ourselves both experiencing and responding, rather than acting consciously according to our will. Maybe we’ve all had an experience where, without any conscious decision on our part, we find ourselves suddenly turning the steering wheel of our car sharply to avoid a possible accident scanario. We are strangely calm and surprisingly effective in that moment. It’s only afterwards, once we’ve snapped back into regular consciousness, that the reality of what just happened hits us and emotion comes to the fore. Like many people I’m sure, I’d experienced this phenomenon a few times in my life, but only in short flashes. This was the first time I’d ever witnessed it sustained over a period of several minutes. 

 

Back in that seventh floor concourse, our experience with the quake was only just beginning. Despite the mayhem of everything rocking wildly, a number of us had made it across to the stairwell and were going down. We followed in single file, holding onto the handrail for dear life with both hands. As we went, the noise all around us from the structure of the building was intense - the rumbling and shuddering, the shrieking, the high-pitched whines presumably of its huge metal girders grinding mercilessly against one another. It was one insane cacophony, an orchestra from hell. You’d have to shout loudly to have any chance of being heard by the person right next to you, like at a rock concert. To make matters worse, the main electricity supply in the building had evidently failed and though a back-up system of the kind you see demonstrated in safety videos on planes appeared to have kicked in, it was pretty dim. I noticed Brendhan, either behind or in front of me, I can't remember, as over a period of several minutes and with no let up in the shaking, we negotiated our way down, level after level, all with an eerie calmness, our normal emotional responses suspended or transcended, ever down and, hopefully soon, to the ground and then finally outside.

 

Though we were quite a throng, I later realised that our weird conga line was only comprised of people from our seminar group, who at Stewart’s bidding had left their stations. The protocol of the company, what the ‘door Hitler’ in his overly authoritarian way had been trying to enforce, was that in the event of an emergency like this everyone was to supposed to stay put, and that’s what the majority of the 5000-odd people working there had evidently done. Otherwise the scene on the stairs would have surely ended up a dangerous, heaving stampede.

 

The worst moment in terms of dread, indeed the only moment of dread, came right at the very end. When we arrived at the foot of the last set of stairs, there was nowhere to go. There we were gathered in the stairwell like a logjam, more coming in behind every few seconds pushing us forward. It was dark down there and, it appeared, the doors would not open. A sharp dressed executive-looking dude pushed his way to the front and with us all looking on he expectantly he held his ID card to the scanner, glowing an icy blue in the emergency lighting. It made bleeps in response but nothing more happened. After six or seven attempts his visibly mounting agitation got the better of him and, letting go a loud screechy yell of a battle cry, he suddenly launched a high kung fu-style kick at the glass of the eye-level scanner! It survived, but still didn’t open the doors. It was a shocking moment, on many levels. All the while, above us the 45-floor colossus of a building kept on rumbling and thundering, shuddering and shrieking, like some hulking underworld demon with us deep in its belly, tiny and insignificant. For the first time, there in that darkness, still with the same eerie air of detachment, came the thought.. ‘Oh God, this fucker’s surely gonna come down. So this is it then… is it..?”. For the one and so far only time in my life, there, before me, lay The Abyss.

 

They say the darkest moment comes before the dawn, for almost at that moment the shaking suddenly stopped. A few more seconds and it was almost quiet, a silence that was suddenly deafening. All around the relief was palpable. Then, at what seemed like the next second, Stewart’s shaven head appeared over the handrail halfway up the stairs to our left. “Hey guys”, he said, calm as ever, “that’s the basement. The exit is up here”.

 

We trudged up the stairs, suddenly able to walk normally. The sunlight flooding in through the huge plate glass windows that comprised the front of the building was almost blinding and the big main doors were now open wide. I wondered how on earth we’d failed to spot them on the way down, they were big enough, but out we now gratefully spilled into the bright Spring sunshine. It truly was another world. As I stumbled out, I saw the ground was littered with many small pieces of masonry. I sat myself down on a nearby low wall and suddenly felt my heart begin to pound as I snapped back into, for want of a better word, myself. What had happened in the last 10 minutes had had a real dreamlike quality about it, in the sense that you lose most of your regular discernment in the dream state, but now it felt like I was awake again. I found myself shaking, almost like the involuntary shivering that accompanies a fever. A minute or so of some good deep breaths though and I began to feel better. I gazed around. There seemed to be no real damage to our building, or any of the others that I could see.

 

As I sat there it was like my senses were heightened. There were people standing in groups, some chatting away, even laughing. I could hear their conversations, and beyond that the distant sound of sirens and alarms. There was still a massive unreality about everything, it was all like a kind of daze, but the difference was I now realised it. I noticed a guy near me talking on his phone and with a jolt I decided to call Yuri. I got through at once, something that wasn’t to be a feature of that day for much longer, and was relieved to find she was okay. She started to tell me how she’d been in the beauty salon getting her hair dyed, and how the water supply had gone down and the staff had to go out and buy bottled water at a convenience store to complete the job. She told me she was walking home and that everything around her looked fine. This was a surprise to me but I was so glad to hear it. Despite how powerful the quake had been, at first glance at least, damage appeared slight. We laughed. It was such a relief to laugh.

 

While we'd been chatting Brendhan had appeared and we both sat there on the wall for a minute. Around us security staff were busy gathering people up and ushering them back into the building, rather like sheepdogs, and Stewart came over and said we should go back in and return to the room. Emerging from the stairs (the elevators were out of action) into the 7th floor concourse area and the panoramic view of the city it afforded, clouds of black smoke could be seen rising ominously from one location on Tokyo Bay.

 

No sooner were be back in the room though than a second equally powerful quake began and lo and behold, there we were we were up and out again. Less of us this time but still a significant number made for the stairs. This time was a totally different experience. The motion was completely different, up-and-down, which made it much easier to move any direction you wanted, and there was far less noise. There was no shift into any kind of autopilot mode consciousness either and it actually felt pretty damn scary in real time. My heart was beating out of my chest and all I could think about was getting the hell out of there. It was far easier to negotiate the stairs though and we fairly flew down them. At the bottom the doors at were still wide open and before very long Brendhan and I found ourselves outside once more, this time with loud alarms going off left and right. In our something approaching panic, we now reasoned we should probably try and get as far out of the range of the buildings as we could, since part of earthquake protocol is to ensure you’re not within range of possible falling objects, particularly glass. To this end we walked a full 100 meters over to a landscaped central area and sat ourselves down on a bench. Nearby a bunch of guys were standing around, all smoking. Looking back towards the two NEC towers, I could see them moving wildly, jiggling like jelly yet with a kind of spiral motion. It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen. The water in the water ornaments scattered around us was rocking back and forth too, almost to spilling point.

 

At length one of guys spoke to us. “You guys aren’t smoking? You need one?”

When we said no and no thanks, his response was ‘Then what the hell are you doing out here?!’. We said twice was enough thanks, that there was no fucking way we were going back inside. The man reacted with surprise and told us we were in the most dangerous place out there in the open. They were only there to smoke, he said, (since it was prohibited both inside and within a certain distance of the buildings) and once they were done they were straight back in. Those towers, he told us, were among the safest buildings in the whole city, like in the top ten, and we were lucky to be there. He gestured to the other buildings around us of similar height, mainly apartments, though older. In the likely, he emphasised, event of another quake it probably wouldn’t be safe to be anywhere outside, even at this distance.

 

We weren’t convinced though. Fuck this for a game of soldiers. Enough was enough, and we were out of there. We walked quickly back and went up to the room to get our stuff, where we found Stewart on his own sitting on one of the desks eating a sandwich. He said we were done for the day. He also had info on the quake and told us that that though the second one had been much nearer, the epicenter of the first was offshore off the north east coast and had been measured at a staggering 9.1. Even so, according to initial news reports at least out of the Tokyo area, despite how intense it had been it seemed damage was minimal. It was great news, we felt a real sense of relief. Amongst the NEC guys who were flitting in and out of there, the mood was the same, that now that it was kind of over and the overriding feeling was that we’d somehow dodged one. We wished each other a good weekend, said we’d see each other on the Monday morning and went our respective ways.

 

Uppermost in my mind was getting myself home for a music gig I had that night. It was St Patrick‘s Week and I had gigs coming up just about every night, right through till the 20th. It was kicking off that Friday night and our Irish folk band ‘Mutiny’ were coming out from Tokyo to a pub in Samukawa near where I was living. I couldn’t hang around. As I prepared to make my way out of the building though, I had no idea either of the actual magnitude of the overall situation or of the immediate crisis developing outside.

 

I stopped by the reception desk in the vacuous main foyer to hand in my day-pass ID. It struck me at once how cold it was in there. I asked them if there was anywhere I could quickly charge my phone. The woman replied not at the moment since the power was still down in the whole building, though they were working hard to get it back up. In what was no more than mere polite smalltalk, I said something like ‘Well, that was quite a shake, wasn’t it’. She replied that if initial measurements were correct, it was the biggest one ever recorded in Japan. Wow, I thought, some feat that. I asked if she’d heard reports of any damage, I wanted to confirm that. I had been in Japan for a major earthquake once before, the 1995 one that hit Kobe, and the immediate aftermath of that one had been horrendous. She coroborated what Stewart had said though, that were no reports of anything yet except for the Tokyo Bay fire that we’d seen earlier. She then enquired if I was leaving, I said I was. She asked how far I had to go to get home. When I told her she looked troubled and tried to dissuade me, reiterating the advisory given to NEC staff that this was an ongoing emergency, that the current situation was precarious and there could still be more quakes, so it was recommended that for the time being everyone stay put and monitor the situation from there. I wasn’t having any of it though. I had my gig to get to and I politely took my leave.

 

As I made my way away from the NEC complex towards the railway station, around me it certainly all looked normal enough. Everything was standing, it appeared to be no different in fact, all of which served to encourage my feeling that somehow things weren’t actually that bad. This turned to a familiar old chestnut for me, why do people always have to make such a fuss. Over the years in Japan I’d noted this tendency of Japanese to ere wildly on the side of over-caution in potential emergency situations. Hitherto it had been mainly typhoons, and okay, once I did get my ass unceremoniously kicked by one of those, but the exception that proves the rule, perhaps? In general, like many non-Japanese I think, I’d found the level of caution to be excessive, even verging on paranoia. There was a slogan used by an insurance company in the UK in the 70s that went ‘We won’t make a drama out of a crisis’, which I’d reapplied to ‘We will make a crisis out of a drama’, and it was this perception that had informed my default response in such situations as this.

 

On arriving at Masashikosugi station though, the scene that greeted me was a little irregular. The wickets were turned off and locked in an open position, I’d never seen that before, and we could walk freely in and out. On the platform a train was in with its doors open and some people sitting inside, but it was clear it was halted and going nowhere fast. All the departure/arrival boards were running a moving red band flashing one word, ‘suspension’. I asked one of the staff what was happening. In true Japanese style he professed not to know anything, that he had no information to offer me except that to say that all lines in the greater Tokyo area were suspended while the computer checked the system and no one could say when it would all restart. I wasn’t too bothered. Okay, fair enough, I thought. Of course it would need a thorough checking after something like that. The vast, complex train network truly is the vital life blood pumping through the veins of the metropolis, and with word already that actual damage had been minimal seemingly borne out, I figured it probably wouldn’t be too long before we were up and running again. Surely.

 

I noticed as I came out that with all the trains down there were now horrendously long lines for the buses. For me buses weren’t an option, I had too far to go, rather I just noted it as a symptom of the situation. Soon I saw that road traffic too was heavy, and pretty much at a standstill. Ever the optimist though, my gig, 8pm start, was the main thing on my mind. There’d be messages to exchange for sure and I knew I had to charge my phone. Up ahead I spied a fitness club. They often have a cafe area, often with a socket or two you can use if you ask nicely, so I made a beeline for there. The girls at the desk were friendly and one, in very fetching black yoga pants, showed me to a little sitting area where, lurking behind a potted plant, was a socket. I gratefully plugged in. There was a TV mounted high on the wall, and naturally the TV networks were in hyper-overdrive. There was footage of the fire on Tokyo Bay, an oil installation by the looks. It showed the pall of dark, acrid smoke drifting across the southern part of the city. In western Tokyo a wall had collapsed at a shopping mall parking facility that it appeared had crushed a killed a woman in her car. They were talking too about the dangers of tsunami and a banner on the screen said a high level warning had been issued. Living on the ocean as I do this is always a concern, however I could see from their map and the flashing red bars along sections of coastline that it wasn’t for our area but for much further north, on the other Pacific coast, the east-facing one. They showed live footage from there, a few cars were moving up and down seemingly unbothered along coastal roads. There were cameras pointed towards the ocean too, nothing much was happening.

 

It wasn’t long before the same girl came over and explained that in the light of the general situation they were going to close. It was a bit of a blow, it was warm and comfy in there. I must have looked down at the coffee their machine had just made for me, for she said they’d only just asked everybody to vacate the gym areas so I was probably okay for another 15 minutes, but that she’d have to turn off the TV. I managed to charge my phone up to about half, which didn’t mean a lot since the battery was weak and would quickly run down but it was something. I thanked them for the help and as I passed through the doors the girl yelled brightly after me ‘Ganbatte ne!’, a commonly used Japanese expression meaning ‘fight!’ or ‘give it your best shot!’. It struck me as an odd thing to say.

 

I headed back to the station. Another staff guy told me the exact same thing as before, though this time the tone was more sombre. It was by now close to 4pm and for the first time I was beginning to wonder ‘damn, am I going to make this bloody gig..’. Inside and out there were many people standing around aimlessly, some were on their phones, more it seemed were trying in vain to get on their phones, and all in all there seemed a growing sense of resignation that we might be in for a bit of a wait. I saw one guy break his phone conversation to shout across to his mates that it was likely the trains were going to be down the rest of the day. Yikes, I thought, please don’t let that be true. Whatever the reality of the situation, for now there was nothing for it but to find somewhere to watch and wait it out. Also, March in Japan can be cold, especially soon as the sun’s down, and that time was fast approaching. I decided the woman on the info desk at NEC might have been right after all so I retraced my steps. However, without ID now and despite my profusions that I actually had been working there earlier in the day, which of course I was unable to prove, gate security wouldn’t let me into the building.           

 

So once more it was over to the station area. I decided I’d better check in with my bandmates and see how they were faring. It connected, or appeared to, but there was no response. I tried again, leaving this one ring till it cut itself off. My tummy was grumbling by now and I decided I’d better find somewhere I could eat something. As I looked around I saw many more places were already closed. Without too much trouble though I found a little bakery with a small cafe area to ensconce myself in, bought myself a hot cup of coffee and a couple of very doughy white flour pastries, chosen mainly as something that would likely help stave off real hunger the longest, and for the next hour or so I sat contemplating my options. With the aroma of the coffee in my nostrils, it was beginning to dawn on me that maybe, just maybe, I was in a bit of a pinch here. But it was nice to be in the warm at least. I just wanted to stay there for a while. I was able to charge my phone too, though it had to go behind the counter for that so I couldn’t use it. Soon I realised I was the only one in there. I watched as outside of the window shadows lengthened. Then, shortly before 5.30, the lady informed me she was closing.

 

Back outside again, it was getting chilly and soon it would be dark. I had a bit of a scout around to see if anything was happening and soon got my answer, nothing. If anything it was getting worse. Just like the health club and the bakery, most shops and other businesses had now closed, hours before they normally would. I didn’t really understand why this was. A glance at the roads showed they were still gridlocked, they looked more like parking lots. Back at the station again, still as it had been before, a third conversation with staff confirmed that nothing had changed. The entire network was still down, with no light to report at the end of the tunnel. This guy was a little more chatty than the others though and the alked quite freely, however one thing he said was disconcerting - they (Tokyu, a private network) would assess it line by line, whereas the whole of JR, Japan Railway, the national company, was likely down for the day. Damn, this was bad news indeed, since the JR Tokaido mainline was my train home from Yokohama, a 30-minute ride. Perhaps clocking the look of dismay on my face he then kind of backtracked, emphasising there’d been no official statement, even suggesting the Tokaido might still run as it’s one of the major ones.

 

There wasn’t much there to hang onto though and I trudged out of with, for the first time, a heavy heart. It was looking more and more hopeless by the minute. The gig was surely already toast. I decided I’d better try and check in with my bandmates again but to my dismay there were not even any signal bars showing now. In terms of getting home at least, there was no need to panic just yet, at just 6pm. I still had time on my side, I reasoned, it was only an hour or so after all, provided the trains started up again of course, though that JR news was a worry. As a last resort worst case scenario I began thinking in terms of a hotel, but that bubble soon got burst too. A guy I got chatting with clued me in on why all the businesses were shutting early.. in a word, liability. I asked him about hotels and he said they would most certainly close for the same reason. With the real threat of further quakes, no hotel would want to take the risk of guests getting crushed in their collapsed buildings. That made sense, but below me my safety net had now gone.

 

I didn’t really know what my best option now was but I was getting cold and I knew I needed to do something. The only thing I could think to do was start walking. Dark was quickly approaching and that would be warmer than standing around, for sure. So I began walking down the main road parallel to the Toyoko train line in the direction of Yokohama. And when the trains started up again, I figured, I’d be right there. And if they didn’t..? Well, I was some 50km away from home, so it wasn’t that I was embarking on a walk all the way, I was just.. well, I didn’t know what I was doing really. For now I was just walking.

 

The road was totally gridlocked, all three lanes of it. Along the pavement (sidewalk) a stream of people were doing the same, walking, all in the same direction, most in silence and with no little resignation. A grim procession it was, and I joined it. It wasn't long before it was fully dark. I saw several women walking in stocking feet, carrying their heels. I began to think just in terms of making it to the next station, and to updates on the train situation. It’s a quick enough journey on the train this, just eight minutes on the express, but I can now attest that it really is quite far. As I walked, I realised in the growing darkness that suddenly there were no lights anywhere anymore and concluded that the area must be in a power outage. The next major station, Hiyoshi, as the only lit building in the whole area, could be seen shimmering white and beacon-like up ahead long before I actually got there. The image it brought to mind was that of the Sacre Coeur Cathedral in Montmartre, Paris, and how that would shimmer white atop its little rise. I concluded the station must have its own generating system.

 

Inside there were quite a lot of people sitting around on the ground across the main concourse. Some had flattened cardboard boxes to sit on, many looked miserable and lost, even a little scared. It looked a bit like a homeless camp, for upmarket homeless maybe, but the demeanours were the same. I asked the staff again what the situation was. The guy gave me the same line, I could almost have ended his sentence for him. It must have been easily 7.30 by now and though my hopes of playing the gig were long since abandoned, I did fancy getting home to my own bed, if at all possible. I decided to try and level with him and asked directly if he thought any trains would actually run again that night. In response he broke what eye contact there was and sucked in through his teeth, a giveaway in this culture that the person has been placed in an uncomfortable position and cannot answer positively or give the response the questioner wants to hear.

‘Aaa, muzuksashii desu ne’. ‘Ma, chotto taihen kamoshiremasen’, (it’s hard to say, it might be a little difficult). As good a way as any of saying ‘I wouldn’t bank on it if I were you, mate’.

Like many people I’m sure, I was really quite shocked the other night to find that Diego Maradona had died. There it was, a notification on my phone’s locked screen, and at just 60 too, younger than me. I confess to not knowing all that much about his life, certainly since his football career came to an end, and to be honest despite being being a huge football fan I haven’t been that interested. However, having read a few obituaries I think I might want to know a bit more about the man himself now, what he went through and the demons with which he tussled throughout his somewhat tortured life.

I have to concede right at the off here that I wasn’t at all impressed by his Hand of God stunt at the Mexico World Cup in 1986, despite the fact it was against England. That indelibly coloured him for me and I've tended to dismiss him for that one action ever since. It offended my innate sense of fair play, especially in the context of the game of football, which I love, and I have never forgiven him for it, despite the many wonders he performed with the ball and whatever else he achieved in the game. For me he was simply a cheat, and a huge cheat at that. The last few days though have caused me to rethink this, probably for the first time, and to reevaluate how fair I've been to hold onto such a harsh view of him instead of seeing the person behind the action.

 

I’ve been a fan of ‘the beautiful game’ since the age of six and growing up in close-knit South Wales, though this is probably true of the UK in general, I had instilled in me at a young age that a sense of fair play and honour in sport was an important thing. Having played the game to a fairly decent level, in the light of his passing I’ve found myself reflecting on and re-examining a couple of my own experiences this week - one, involving an Argentinian, where I was on the receiving end of similarly despicable behaviour, the other where I was, albeit perhaps somewhat innocently, the perpetrator and villain. 

 

I’ve always been of the mind that antics such as the Hand of God from a prominent world star and role model to absolute millions like Maradona can only but serve to enable others in doing likewise. Surely it sends the message loud and clear that cheating is okay, a perfectly legitimate tool to have in your locker. And even on the biggest stage of all, where the stakes are at their highest and with the whole world watching, anything is fine, even such outrageously flagrant cheating, if you can get away with it. If it helps you gain an advantage then hey, it’s all good.

 

I appreciate there may have been other factors at play here for the Argentinian people, since it occurred not long after the Falklands war. That was 1982, and as a recently-emerged critically thinking adult the whole thing was for me just such a sad travesty. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that the UK and much of its populace could still be roused to such jingoistic heights as to so readily go onto a war footing over a tiny lingering colonial possession, of no real strategic worth and with a minuscule population, about as far away from London as you could possibly go without going into space. That it soon escalated into all out war and led to the deaths of many innocent people, poor young unsuspecting servicemen from the UK among them, and involve the borderline war crime - no, let's all a spade a spade here - the war crime of the sinking of the Argentinian warship the Belgrano when it was actually in retreat really disturbed and disgusted me. In addition, it had the insidious effect of boosting massively the hitherto seriously flagging image and popularity of then UK Prime Minister and national headmistress throughout the whole of the 80s, Margaret Thatcher. 

 

I was actually in the States at the time, on my Jack Kerouac On The Road ‘gap year’, and to see it all unfold from a foreign perspective, especially in a country that had challenged the shackles of British imperilalism and colonialism itself once upon a time and tended to not be exactly well disposed towards it, made its pettiness seem all the more bizarre. It left me not just disgusted but embarrassed, and feeling very sorry towards Argentina. The fact that a mere 4 years later their lauded maestro Maradona, the greatest footballer of his generation, could pull off such an outrageous stunt on a stage like that, a World Cup quarter final against England with the whole world watching, did hold some kind of wild poetic justice. How that must have immeasurably delighted Argentinians, for whom that war was and still remains many, many times more offensive than it can ever be for me. 

 

However, having said that, he was latin American after all, so even if there had been no such recent war grievance deeply enflaming him and his countrymen, I suspect he would probably still have done it.

 

When I was growing up there was a sense that when it came to football the Latin countries were overflowing with dirty tricks. As an impressionable 8-year old I remember watching horrified as my beloved (at the time) Manchester United, complete with my first footy hero Georgie Best in their ranks, became the subject of a riot in the aftermath of the World Club Championship - a one-off game of European champions against South American champions - against Estudiantes de la Plata in Argentina in the late 60s. There were news reports that they even got attacked by local police with batons and I remember the shocking pictures of players holding their heads, blood streaming down their faces. And all this without even taking into account the thuggery they had endured earlier at the hands of their opponents during the game itself. 

 

Throughout the 70s blatantly cynical on-field violence seemed to occur as a matter of course in the European competitions whenever Spanish, Portuguese or particularly Italian teams were involved. Though this darker side of the game was definitely alive and well in UK domestic football too, it was never quite as cynical and unbridled. What we had on our football pitches was a uniquely ‘British’ brand of cynicism, just as hard-edged but much more upfront and in your face, and such flagrant underhandedness, almost a modus operandi for these southern European teams, was not a part of it.

 

I made reference to a couple of experiences of my own here and how they have led me to reflect on my judgement of Diego Maradona this week. The Argentinian I mentioned above was an adversary at the Hawaii State Soccer Championships in the early 2000s and he led the line for one of the teams we played in that tournament. As plucky Kauai, the only island never to be conquered by King Kamehameha and brought into his the Hawaiian Kingdom, there's a fierce sense of separate identity within the island chain. Despite a much smaller population and so a much more limited pool to choose from (hence a goalkeeper in his mid 40s), you can count on Kauai teams to really fight their corner, often with backs firmly against the wall, and they would never go down easily. 

 

In a game against one of the Honolulu teams, we’d gone a goal down early on, and around the 30 minute mark their flamboyant Latino striker, late 20's, lean build with flowing locks, chased a ball down to the byline just inside our penalty area. One of our defenders went with him. As he shielded the ball, his back to our defender, rather than just shadow him our guy naively attempted to put a foot in. There was no need to even play it but he did, and low and behold he was caught in his trap. On first contact, in spite of it being minimal, he yelled out and threw himself theatrically into the air, proceeding to then roll over several times on the ground wailing unconsolably. It wasn't even like it was that convincing but it was enough to con the equally naive referee, about 30 yards away from the play and struggling to catch up, and he pointed right to the spot. The striker, who I later found out was Argentinian, did a little personal celebration, picked up the ball and, having made a miraculous recovery, duly put the penalty away himself. I felt he was way too full of himself from the start and now here he was showboating, grinning all over his face with what he’d just pulled off. I glared at him as he celebrated, anger pulsing through me.

 

At 2-0 the game was now almost certainly beyond us, and so it proved. My feeling remained deep anger and resentment towards this bastard and out there on the pitch I concocted a revenge fantasy. I really hoped that at some point he was going to come through on me one on one, and if he did I knew just what I'd do. I'd make no attempt to play the ball, just put my boot right through him as he went past me as hard as I could, somewhere around the knee area where it really hurts. This would no doubt be a red card but that would be immaterial. And as he was writhing in (hopefully) genuine agony on the ground, I would walk up to him, bend down and say calmly “Now THAT, you cheating little cunt, is a penalty”.

 

I wanted that so much it hurt. I was so seething from the injustice of it and I could think of nothing else but exacting appropriate revenge. It’s been 20 years since that day now but the incident is still fresh in my mind and whenever I reflect on it I feel the same violent reactive feelings bubbling away not too deeply inside. The injustice was just so egregious. And what I was feeling was righteous anger, after all, right? 

 

However, in the light of Maradona‘s passing and his legacy I'm now taking another look. Do two wrongs ever really make a right? No, of course not, they never do. As a result everyone loses. If one of the England defenders had inflicted similar revenge on Diego that day, cynically taking him out at the next opportunity with a stiff boot, studs up, around the knee area and maybe put him out of action for the rest of the tournament, how would that have been viewed? It would no doubt have been applauded by England fans but how about the wider audience, those with no dog in the fight? Or, in the worse case scenario, what if it had caused permanent damage to probably the world's greatest and most popular player of the time or maybe even, God forbid, ended his career? What would the historical fallout from that have been then? 

 

As an aside, I must say I've always wondered why one of the England defenders didn’t take him down that day, even in less cynical fashion, during that dazzling mazy run from halfway out on the far touchline that culminated in that famous second goal. That’s not to take anything away from the sheer brilliance he showed in netting that. Maybe it was simply because they were all nonplussed, still reeling from the Hand of God moment just minutes earlier. Or was this the good old British 'sense of fair play and honour in sport' in action? For surely any other defence in the world would have cleaned him out way before he was within striking distance of the net.

 

The second incident I was inspired to recall was again from my football past. This happened when I was very young and raw, just 16, playing Welsh League football for Barry Town in the mid 70s. I played the best part of two seasons in that team and this incident occurred within the first couple of months.. The previous season I’d been playing local league Under-16s football so to find myself suddenly thrust into Welsh League was a steep learning curve and it was proving quite a difficult transition for me, not because of the level of football so much as the edgy, 'no nonsense' culture around it. South Wales is by definition a hard place, an industrial (soon to be post-industrial) working class heartland, and that league had more than its share of hard-nut characters. It remains by far the most cynical football I ever played and seriously warped the notion of football as 'the beautiful game'. I can’t say I ever really got used to it or indeed ever really enjoyed it. 

 

That day we were playing away against Merthyr Tydfil at Penydarren Park and late in the first half something happened that I will never forget. We'd been second best but were somehow 1-0 up, but since the goal we'd been under quite a bit of pressure and it was all hands to the pump. The ball had been flying dangerously around our box when suddenly a snapshot came in that almost at once deflected off one of our defenders, sending it the other way. I had already shifted my weight though and was wrongfooted, but it looped up quite high and I realised, perhaps a bit late, that I could maybe just get there. I shot along my goal line only to see the ball come back off the post and cross the goal line. Utilising my momentum though I dived full length and scooped it out from fully a foot, maybe even two, behind the line. As I did so I flung my feet up into the air for some reason, perhaps to cover my dodgy actions and make it look more 'last ditch'. The whole thing happened so quickly that it would’ve been very difficult for the officials to see if the ball had crossed the line or not, but their striker, a rather scary, slightly mad-looking ginger-bearded, fuzzy-haired and head-banded bruiser with a couple of teeth missing, was in no doubt. He and one of our defenders had quickly followed up the looping ball and as our defender booted it safely away for a throw in near the corner flag, he immediately stopped and loudly appealed the goal. 

 

The referee however was unsure and after a bit of deliberation went over to talk to his linesman. The upshot, a full minute later, was 'no goal'. I was frankly amazed. The ball was so far over the line it wasn't funny, and unbelievably it hadn't been given. The ginger striker was incensed and at once started mouthing off, pointing accusingly at me as Merthyr took their throw in. The move came to nothing and resulted in a goal-kick, and as I placed the ball on the 6-yard line to take it he came right up and angrily confronted me. He was livid and called me ‘a cheating little cunt’ (hence my choice of phrase for the Argentinian). As a callow 16-year-old I was totally freaked out. Even so, despite my heart suddenly beating madly out of my chest, I nervously stood my ground. He was not far off my height, 6'2, but much more heavily built with bulging Poppeye-like tattoed forearms I remember and he brought his face very close to mine in open and aggressive confrontation. I swear I could smell whiskey on his breath. After a very nervy what was probably only a couple of seconds, our biggest defender suddenly came barging in between us, but not before he had given me a hefty shove in the chest with both hands that semi-winded me. This earned him a yellow card from the ref and a bellowing at from our captain, who’d sprinted back from midfield to join in the affray. The guy was anything but assuaged though and continued glowering at me menacingly and muttering ominously under his breath for the last few minutes of the half.

 

When the half time whistle blew there was a bit of argy bargy (pun intended). Voices were raised and tempers flared as the recriminations started. Some of the Merthyr players confronted the ref and the ginger guy was up to his tricks again, trying to make his way in my direction, but was held in check quite a safe distance away by two of his team mates, a couple of the 'minders' in our team looking on monitoring the situation too. He persisted though, repeatedly shouting what he'd called me at the time across the cackle of players between us and generally getting out of order until the ref threatened him with a second yellow. His team mates then physically grabbed him, and pulling him away from the fray marched him off towards the tunnel. Actually I was wary of the ref too as we walked off. Nothing happened but with all the hubbub going on I was afraid he would come over and ask me straight if it went in or not and I didn't know what I would say if he did. He was pretty much preoccupied with protestations from their players but I decided to give him a wide berth anyway. The worst thing was I felt like all attention was on me, not only from the players but from the home supporters too, who now gathered at the tunnel area to hurl abuse at us as we left the field. It was a nervy walk in to say the least.

 

Once in the safety of the dressing room, our manager, who I was never that comfortable with and whose name I can’t recall anymore, made a beeline for me asked me if the ball had gone in or not. There was always a level of latent (and sometimes not so latent) anger with him. He was the antithesis of the old 'arm around the shoulder’ type. Had he not been it would have certainly made me feel much more comfortable and accepted, but instead he was much more of the 'you’d better fucking perform and not fuck up or you’re going to make me really fucking angry' school of man management. Everyone else seemed on the level with him but I found him quite intimidating and I was glad when he stepped down a couple months later. When I told him 'yes, by a mile', he broke into a massive devious grin. He ruffled my hair and brought both his hands to my cheeks in a rough cradling, ending by half-slapping both my cheeks to show his approval. It didn’t help much.  

 

Several of my team mates had expressed their approval to me too as we got in, and while there was almost relief that I'd managed to please the boss and now had points on the board with him, overriding everything was the weirdest sense of unease in the pit of my stomach. It was the strangest feeling and it kept getting stranger. It wasn't really that I’d done something bad, yet for some reason, despite the ebulliant mood amongst our team as a result, I was far from able to feel okay about what had just happened. I felt vulnerable and exposed, and probably a little guilty, and I didn't have a clue how to process it all. I was yet to feel any real affinity with anyone in that dressing room and now I was basically out of my depth and didn't want to be there - 'Beam me up, Scotty'. Looking back on it years later it's easier to see why. Despite what our team thought, when viewed objectively I had been 'a naughty boy' and I'd been caught. Just across the narrow corridor there was a bunch of mad as hell Merthyr players feeling very hard done by. Just like the ball I had crossed a line and I might just be about to pay for it. The truth was I was scared shitless. 

 

I found myself wondering what that striker might try and do to me in the second half if he got the chance. They'd been better than us in the first half so there was every chance we'd meet at close quarters a few times in the second. I remember well the trepidation I felt going back out onto that field, and the boos that greeted us as we did so. As it turned out though the second-half was a relatively quiet affair. Our brawniest minder, a mid 30s strapping ex-soldier, was now switched from midfield to sweeper, maybe to protect me, who knows, I was never in on that if that's what happened, but he shepherded things very well and in the end we ran out quite easy 3-1 winners. The crowd, a bit of a ‘man and his dog’ kind of crowd it must be said but a crowd nonetheless, weren't letting go of it though. There were boos and some angry shouts of abuse directed at me throughout the rest of the game and again at the final whistle as we went off. 

 

After the game in the concourse between the dressing rooms I walked by the referee explaining his decision to an obviously aggrieved Merthyr contingent. “Look, I can’t give what I can’t see” were the words I heard him repeat over and over. As we changed I must say my mind turned to possible recriminations outside as we were leaving the ground. There aren’t many rougher places in South Wales than Merthyr, though it has to be said Barry could very likely rival it. We certainly had some likely lads in our ranks who would be only too happy to step up should push come to more than shove, but as it was it was fine. Soon I was sitting snugly in the back of a car zipping down the A470 on the way home, mightily relieved to be safe and out of there. 

 

There was no chat from them about the incident on the way home, I remember being a little surprised about that. It only came up once, when I brought up myself about me feeling I wanted to avoid the ref going in at half time. They listened to my story then after a short pause the guy driving said, "You know what you say if the ref asks you if the ball crossed the line or not, don't you..?" leaving his question hanging. At length I bit and said "..What?". After another short pause, expectation of a punch line now hanging in the air, he said " You say.. 'No fucking way, ref!' hahaha..", and they all burst out laughing. I didn't know whether to laugh along or at least pretend to, I had the distinct sense I was the butt of their joke. One of them playfully ruffled my hair, their chuckles died down and the conversation instantly turned to something else nothing to do with the game or football in general. 

 

Looking back now, among our team what happened was probably only a big deal for me. The other players were mostly all savvy veterans, for whom something like that was likely not that big a deal at all, just something that had happened in the game that we'd been fortunate to get away with and certainly not anything to dwell on. 

 

I was never proud of that moment though. If truth be told I was ashamed and embarassed by it and I never told the story whenever football stuff came up in conversation, at the time or since really. I've never forgotten the fact I'd done it though and the feelings it had engendered, yet despite this I was nevertheless very quick to roundly condemn Maradona for his Hand of God stunt. I'd never really rationalised it till now but it was as if my 'little cheating' was somehow not anything like as bad as his 'big cheating', I guess because of just that, mine was miniscule in comparison. I'm well aware now of the obvious dichotomy not to mention hypocracy here.

 

So given those two experiences and my new reflections upon my reactions in the wake of his death, who am I to criticise him for what he did against England in Mexico in 1986? People have been calling him a ‘flawed genius’ and emphasizing the ‘flawed’ bit. And he probably was. As I say though, I know very little of the details of his life so I’m loathe to comment on that side of things, I’m just sticking to football. 

 

So does being a ‘flawed genius’ then forgive transgressions of basic human decency and give legitimacy to flouting basic commonly accepted standards of behavior? Is there really such a thing as decency in football anyway? I like to think there is, though I know I'm in the minority there. I remember Paolo DiCanio once though, when he had a chance to score catching the ball to halt play because of his concern for an opponent who was down injured on the field. The football world roundly applauded that, and rightly so. There have been many other such cases too, from which I take solace.

 

So as for myself, what exactly should I have done in Merthyr that day, follow the referee up and say ‘actually ref I cheated, the ball did cross the line’? No doubt my team mates and particularly my anger management case manager would’ve been delighted if I had, they’d have unceremoniously kicked my ass all the way back home to Barry I'm sure. But then, DiCanio’s manager too was critical of him at the time I remember, and I bet the fans were too. It was the media that mainly led his exoneration and fans of the game in general joined in the chorus. To be honest though, it never occurred to me to do that, to own up. What I had done was act out of pure instinct in the moment, and suddenly there we were with a real kerfuffle going on, tempers flaring and things really getting scarily out of hand all because of something I'd done. I just knew then to keep my head down. I’m sure Diego didn’t think about what he did either, he just did it. And in the aftermath, really, what are you going to do? The fallout from my little incident was intense enough, I can't begin to imagine what it must've been like for him.

 

I think I’m right in saying this, but Maradona was voted 'Man Of The Year' in Scotland for his action. It seems every year the Scots somehow get to vote on their ‘man of the year’, or so I was told by a Scotsman in a pub once. It could be an urban legend, I don’t know, and I don’t really care enough to go and Google it, but the fact remains he got it purely because he knocked ‘the auld enemy’ England out of the World Cup singlehandedly, pun intended, by cheating and by cheating so utterly brazenly and spectacularly. 

 

I guess it’s the same kind of appreciation and reverence that’s reserved for ‘folk heroes’ like Robin Hood or Guy Fawkes, Ronnie Biggs. And and many another ‘working class hero’ I'm sure, the little man who gets one over on the big man and everyone, the population at large, delights. That’s certainly how Argentina saw the whole Hand of God thing and I for one am now happy to let them have it.

 

Maybe it’s a sad reflection on humanity that the need for revenge, ‘an eye for an eye’, which Gandhi once proferred 'makes the whole world blind', and the stout refusal to let go of real or imagined grievance is never very far below the surface. I held onto my condemnation of him for 35 years and delighted when England beat Argentina 1-0 in the World Cup here in Japan in 2002. Standing in a throng of thousands of delirious England fans (one of which I am most definitely not) waiting to exit the stadium in Sapporo, the chant was 'You can shove the Hand of God up your Arse!' (to the tune of 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain'), there was a sense of a grievous wrong at least partially avenged. 

 

But for now, Diego, I salute you. I will no longer judge you on that one action alone and label you unqualifyingly as a ‘cheat’. There was obviously so much more to you than that and I will now try and accept and see see your life in a broader context. Certainly for the amazing, perhaps unrivaled footballer you were, but not just for that, also as the amazing personality you so obviously must have been to be so loved by millions and millions of people, not only in your own country and the places where you strutted your stuff but all around the world. 

 

Three days, no less, of mourning begins today in Argentina. I too humbly light a candle for you.