2 - Sleepless in Japan

(Tuesday 27th March, Sumoto) 

We (along with 4 other Japanese dudes) got the ferry from Kansai Airport across to Sumoto, Awajishima at 1:25pm (5:25 am UK time) and arrived at 2:30pm, but I was so out of it due to being up for 24 hours I took the opportunity of catching 40 winks stretched out on the seat until we arrived. If you've ever tried to have forty winks on a ferry you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Our (almost) private ferry

The wait in the foyer of the Condo until 4pm check-in time (8am UK time) was the longest ever. Sitting on those comfy leather sofas in that beautiful, luxurious foyer with luggage scattered around us trying to keep my eyes open was a losing battle, and I was conscious (just) that we were an untidy family cluster, but I had neither the will nor the inclination to do anything about it. Eventually a big official guy came along and efficiently swept us up in the check-in procedure and out the front door.

The main building is a hotel but they bought a few apartment blocks  nearby for self-catering. So once we got our key we drifted across the street like tumbleweeds up a flight of stairs to a nice clean two-bedroom apartment with a Japanese-style tatami room, dining room, TV, one hob kitchenette, shower, balcony, and most of the windows glazed due to such proximity with next-door apartment buildings. 

Rather disappointed to discover that my nice international electric adaptor I bought from Boots years ago doesn't seem to work. Now there was no way to charge my laptop or any of our USB stuff. Through the haze I was dimly aware the best way to combat jet lag was to stay awake until early evening at least, so after unpacking I stretched out on the bed with the curtains open doing my best not to plummet into a deep, bottomless sleep. Then we went out for some reconnoitre of the local area to hunt down some supplies. 

Matching retro mod con set

It was great to be back in Sumoto again after 7 years. It's a funny yet pleasant feeling to have such vague, murky memories refreshed after so long. The temperature was warm, the day still bright and welcoming, the heat rising from the pavements from the day, as we walked up and across towards the main shopping district. In Edion, the first of the huge stores, we bought my son an enormous Bayblade Arena, which he'd been looking forward to getting for the last few weeks, and now it was up to me to carry the damn thing around while half asleep. My wife succeeded in purchasing a UK-Japan plug adaptor, so that should be that problem solved. 

Lost in translation: A selfie sticker booth for young people 

In the second giant department store we met one of my wife's friends and her husband and I suddenly found myself in the unenviable position of having to converse on a social level in Japanese after being out of the country for so long. When we got back home I just about had enough energy to have some supper, read a few pages of Lord of the Rings to my son (making up delirious sentences here and there) before we both crashed out and knew no more... 

... except for the distant drunken singing, which my subconscious recognised to mean that we were located downtown and probably near and above a karaoke snack bar.

... and the unmistakeable sound of countless tiny Japanese children shouting and learning and having fun, signifying that we were probably near and above a kindergarten and that it was already (by someone's yardstick if not my own) morning. 

Read Day 3.

Japan Day 1 - Going East

(Monday 26th March, Kansai International Airport) 

Well, here we are in Japan after quite a long but relatively pleasant trip.

We left our house by taxi at 6:30am on 26th March, and caught a plane from Edinburgh to Helsinki, Finland from 9:30am for a couple of hours. This plane was about half full and quite small, and the take off and landing seemed to be a bit on the steep side, but I managed to catch a few Z's and my son had a bit of earache but we made it in one piece.

We had lunch in Helsinki at a restaurant and managed to successfully navigate the passport controls (twice) only to find out that since we were transferring there we shouldn't have gone out of the secure area in the first place! Ha ha! It was the same guy who showed us out as showed us back in again.

A few hours later and we boarded a plane to Kansai which was a good few sizes bigger. Here are the in-flight films I watched in order of merit:

Three Billboards 
Bladerunner 2049
Splash - Sorry, no - The Sound Of Water - no, apologies again - The Shape of Water

Had a delicious dinner and breakfast. My son was sick a couple of times (due to travel sickness) but apart from that I think he loved the films and the games and caught a few hours of sleep. I didn't sleep at all, keen as I was to catch the ending of Bladerunner 2049 before the plane landed. I was pleased to recognise the unused opening storyboards from the first Bladerunner (given as examples in the book 'Film Art') used to start off the sequel : a good sign that the filmmakers were keen to remain faithful to the original.  2 hours + 9.5 hours is much better than 1 hour + 10.5 for sure, which would have been then case if we'd changed at Heathrow. 

We touched down at 9am Japan time (1am UK time), and my wife and I had our first holiday argument at 9:05. She wanted to carry a small bag of vomit off the plane with us and though Arrivals. I was against this idea. I asked her several times to leave it on the plane for the staff to deal with as it was their job, but she (very Japanesely) didn't want to upset them. Fortunately we compromised and she left it in the first bin we came to after disembarking, so we didn't need to stand in line at customs with it. "Anything to declare?" "Just this small bag of vomit.

It's actually really good to be back in Japan after all this time. Difficult to explain to people who've never been. Just something about the place. Services are very customer orientated. Everything's nice and clean and on time. People are smiling and friendly, and I get to use my Japanese again, however rusty it may be. The weather's mild, and I didn't even resent having to get my fingerprints taken at immigration, which we navigated without mishap or separation and in relatively good time. Dotours is still here, and hundred yen coins still work, so that's all good. The exchange rate is currently £1 = 150 yen. 

Actually makes me wonder if I could get another English teaching job here, as they've given me a three month tourist visa!

It's been almost exactly six years since we were last here. We moved to Scotland in May 2012, a few months after my father passed away and a year or so after the massive 3/11 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima meltdown, and just haven't had the funds or the opportunity to return since then.

Read Day 2.

Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 4

 We were due to get the Shinkansen out of Shin Yokohama but heeding a feeling in my gut I went down to check the Machida JR station early only to find that all the shutters were down and the station closed, with no employees anywhere to be found. Taped to the shutters was a typed notice in Japanese explaining the situation, but I could barely understand a word. I was too angry and disappointed. What I’d envisaged was coming true. We were being trapped in Tokyo.

The train lines were supposedly being closed due to rolling black outs to try and save power due to many of the nuclear power plants being shut down for safety fears.

I went home and explained things to my wife. Then I began watching the wind direction to check if there were any NW winds blowing radioactive dust in our direction. 

On the website Wiki Questions I asked what the best way to avoid inhaling radioactive dust particles was, and one guy said a face mask with wet tissue paper on the inside, so that’s what I used most of the time I went outside. But whether or not it was effective I don’t know. I think my chest may have started hurting due to inhaling fragments of wet tissue paper.

In Fukushima reactor building unit 3 exploded injuring eleven people. The president of the French nuclear safety authority said that Fukushima should be rated a 5 (accident with wider consequences) or even a 6 (serious accident) on the INES.

While some people were arguing about what rating to give it, other people were making themselves sick drinking mouthwash containing iodine mistakingly thinking this would protect them from thyroid cancer.

Day 5

Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 3

 I woke up feeling relatively optimistic, but when my wife told me of the events that happened overnight about the extension of the evacuation zone and the explosion, I couldn't face eating my cereal, actually feeling like I was going to be sick. I left for a while and tried to walk it off and rehydrate myself.

While out in the streets it occurred to me how much I had fucked up. I had no health insurance, my family and I were inside a potentially life threatening situation, and I was ill. My head was pounding and I still felt the waves of nausea come and go. Even though I had a history of headaches and nausea under tired and stressful conditions, it occurred to me that I might already have radiation poisoning. This nightmare followed me on my walk for a few minutes. I was the only one drinking unfiltered tap water - my wife and son both used a filter system or boiled water. Could there have been a crack in the water pipes letting in some kind of radiation? The worry that this might be the case added to my stress levels. I looked around at the other people who all looked fine. This seemed to suggest that the illness I was feeling was caused by stress/tired/PC related eyestrain, but near the convenience store the inevitable happened. I was sick in the car-park round the back. Even while being sick a switch flicked in my mind - a kind of acceptance that things were not good. I accepted at least that I was being sick. So much for rehydration, but I did feel much better.

In the convenience store I was cogent enough to realise it would soon be White day and that I'd better get some chocolates for my wife now or never.

I made my way back home. Through the still dwindling head-ache and sickness I was able to say to my wife the words quietly that for some reason it was so difficult to say. 

"I think we should go."

My wife saw I was in bad shape and after booking a hotel in Osaka on the net (I couldn't face looking at the screen again) went out to the second hand store to try to pick up a buggy, and that I should rest. Weirdly, almost as soon as they left, my headache disappeared and I felt much better. Does stress really affect me that much? I got on my bicycle and headed unsteadily down to Machida station trying not to panic or look panicky. There was a long line at the JR Green Counter of other people with apparently the same idea perhaps, but I didn't get the sense of any major concern. For the most part it seemed like just another day. The Yokohama line was running fine. People seemed happy. I decided to try my hand at booking the tickets on the machine, which turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. I bought three reserved seat tickets for the Nozomi Shinkansen from Shin Yokohama tomorrow at 12:09 pm.

Feeling a good deal better I headed back home. I think I also canceled the Community centre rooms for our proposed movie shoot on the 14th, before heading up to the second hand shop to assist my wife in the buying of the buggy and the substantially more complicated task of removing our son from the toy section.

Meanwhile at Fukushima a partial meltdown was reported at Unit 3. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency rated the situation at Unit 1 as level 4 (an accident with local consequences) on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Chernobyl was  rated the highest at 7 (a major accident).

Day 4

Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 2

Kanagawa, Japan

 Saturday is kind of a haze for me to recall now. I remember that we were all just happy that we'd survived a major disaster and thought the worst was over. Aftershocks still rumbled through the apartment but they didn't cause any disruption. We kept the helmets, torch and radio close at hand. I heard about the reactor at Fukushima and imagined pretty much right away that it would cause problems, either by igniting panic in Tokyo, or else if the authorities were unable to get it under control soon that the radiation levels may get out of hand. I remember thinking that the worst case scenario could be another Chernobyl, with everyone in Tokyo either ordered to evacuate, causing a choke up on the trains, buses and roads out of the city, or stay indoors where we'd also be trapped, and the only way to escape such a situation would be to pre-empt it. I also pretty much decided straight away that the government would probably play down the disaster to avoid either panic or loss of face, and so I assumed that the situation was always slightly worse than they said it was. This had happened many times before, with NOVA for example, or FOI, the electronics company I taught English at, both pretending everything was peachy until it was far far too late and everything went pear-shaped. Plus there was always a time lag between when something harmful reaches the public and the government notices it and warns the public about it. I wanted to stay ahead of this time lag.

Unfortunately, due to watching too much internet the night before and not getting enough sleep, I had a bit of a headache and decided to take it easy for the day. I wasn't really in the mood for evasive action.

But I couldn't help be drawn back to watching things develop on the net. BBC was running a 24 hour news page on the strings of disasters, complete with video and twitter updates, but watching earthquake devastation on the news from an external viewpoint while actually still feeling aftershocks and still being inside the situation created a strong feeling of nausea and vertigo.

Slept with the family again, but due to my son still waking up every 90 minutes for milk didn't get much rest.

The Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant after the 2011
 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Reactor 1 to 4 from right to left.

Unbeknownst to us a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off Fukushima Unit 1. The evacuation zone was extended to 20km around the plant and sea water was being used for emergency cooling, and the release of iodine 131 from a damaged reactor core led Japanese officials to distribute iodine pills to people living around the plant to avoid thyroid absorption.

Day 3.

(Photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#/media/File:Fukushima_I_by_Digital_Globe.jpg under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake 11/3/2011 Day One

 Earthquake : 2:46pm, Magnitude 9.1, 450 km NE of our location

Epicentre of the quake

We were in Sagami Ono (near SW Tokyo) after looking for a new buggy for my son in Machida and failing, as the old one had chosen the exact moment that I was pushing him across some train tracks to fall apart. We'd basically given up and decided to separate - my wife would push my son around in the Dept Store buggy until he fell asleep and then go home, and I would go back to Machida by train to figure out some movie scheduling (Ripped).

I went down under the department store building to the platform and as I stepped on the train I noticed everyone was glancing up the carriage towards the driver's area. I thought the train had jerked a bit due to an electrical fault and they were looking up to confirm, but as I got on and sat down, the carriage then started jerking around as if it was a kind of fairground attraction. I thought at first the driver was doing something with the controls, but then it dawned on me that it must be an earthquake as trains don't tend to have 'sideways thrusters'. 

Safer on train or off? I decided to leap off onto the platform and stand next to a pillar, although in retrospect it was probably safer to stay on the train to avoid falling panels etc, but fortunately nothing fell down from above. I waited for a while for the shaking to stop and then ran upstairs and out the gates to try and find my wife and son. It's funny, but I didn't feel scared or worried, I just thought right, this is it : find the brood and check they're all safe. So I ran around while trying to contact them by email or calling, all the while my cellphone flatly refusing to be any use whatsoever, like, 'you're having a laugh, right, mate?'

People had flooded out of the department store but others were still in the supermarket milling around finishing their shopping. There was hardly any damage except a water pipe had burst in the ceiling of one of the lower floors and on one outside corner of the building some of the decorative tiles had crumbled off. I wandered around both main exits, inside and outside the supermarket, and tried to think where she would have gone. The lifts had already stopped, and I hoped everyone had been taken off them but was unable to ask an official to confirm, as that would have been a nightmare. Still, I decided it was unlikely anyone was stuck in a lift as there were no-one panicking nearby any of them. I tried to gain access to an upper floor, but was then asked to go back down by a shop assistant. I told them I was looking for my family and he said that everyone was being asked to leave the building so they'd be outside.

I went to check if the tricycle was still where we'd left it, because if it was gone it would have meant they'd left and gone home already and I could stop worrying, but to my dismay it was still there. I ran back to the department store complex, where a tonne of people were still milling about outside. No-one was panicking, just waiting. Some talking on cellphones but mine was still nonfunctional. I went back up to the doors to see water dripping out of the ceiling from the burst pipe and wandered around some more trying not to panic.

Eventually I decided to check a wider circle and helped another woman with a buggy down some stairs to ground level (as I know what a pain it can be to carry them when there's no lifts working) and walked round trying my phone again, when finally I heard my wife call my name from near the convenience store. Thankfully she and my son were both fine.

We returned to our apartment talking about what happened, seeing the odd wall that had fallen down, but as yet still unaware of the magnitude or location of the epicentre of the earthquake or what would come next. 

When we arrived at our small apartment which was on the first floor of a four apartment block, the rooms were a complete mess. Things had been thrust off the shelves and scattered around like it had recently played host to a poltergeist convention. Satisfyingly the anti-earthquake measures I’d installed above the tall glass cabinet to stop it from falling over during this exact kind of eventuality (four curtain rods screwed in between its upper surface and the ceiling) had worked and it was still upright and in one piece.

My room after the earthquake 

A year or two before I’d watched a Japanese disaster movie called Japan Sinks, in which thousands of people die by earthquake, flooding, tidal wave, erupting volcano etc as Japan is pulled under the sea by shifting tectonic plates, and I immediately went out to stock up on emergency equipment from Tokyu Hands including a white safety helmet. As we began tidying up I put it on my wife’s head despite her joking laughter, and soon enough when she opened an overhead cupboard above the sink a metal flask fell out and bounced off her helmet.

Fortunately we were far enough from the coast to be out of reach of any possible tsunamis but nevertheless I tried to keep an eye on what was going on in the media. Compared to many others, we were extremely lucky. We didn’t know it yet but we’d just experienced the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan and fourth biggest worldwide. 

What we also didn’t know was that a 14m high tsunami had washed over the walls at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and knocked out their emergency generators whose job had been to continue cooling the reactors after their fission reactions had been automatically shut down on detection of the earthquake. 

Day Two