When the big earthquake hit Japan on Friday the 11th of March, I was walking in the streets of the Shimo-Kitazawa neighborhood in Tokyo. I suddenly felt bad, like a dizziness sensation and the feeling that I will soon faint. I then stopped walking and realized that it was actually not me, but that the ground was moving. Around me everybody had stopped walking and talking. We were looking at the sky, at the buildings moving, the electricity lines shaking. We were all still, waiting for the end of the tremors, all asking himself ‘Will it stop? Will it go stronger?’. The time had stopped, the nature was speaking, and we couldn’t do anything else than waiting for the end of the earthquake.
When the earthquake stopped, everybody looked at each other, like waking up from a surrealist dream. We exchanged a few words, and then continued to do what we were doing. The funny thing is that the person close by me, a 60 or 65 years old man, seemed very relaxed with the situation, telling to me with a large smile that 'this one was a long one!'. It is now more than two years that I am living in Japan and had the experience of a few small earthquakes, but nothing compared to this one. So the man's reaction made me think that such strong earthquakes already happened in Tokyo and that it was quite a 'normal' one for Japan. But when I saw the shelves lying on the floor in a shop nearby, I then really realized the strength that just hit us.
Luckily this day I had my bicycle with me, and as I was living not so far from Shimo-Kitazawa, I could reach home quickly. The furniture in the kitchen and my room were in a total mess, as well as my housemate's records which could form a little mountain on the floor. But nobody was injured, as well as all of my relatives and friends, which was the most important after all.
I then switched on the news and discovered the Tsunami tragedy as well as the Fukushima nuclear problems later on in the evening. The next days also knew new earth tremors, some governments started to ask their citizens to leave Tokyo or even Japan, a lot of sometimes contradictory news came up. After a week-end glued to the news, my Japanese and foreigner friends living in Tokyo as well as myself decided to stay here and try to continue a normal life, making the choice to having confidence in the efforts made to solve the situation. The worst thing that could happen would have to spread a general panic.
So on the following Monday and all week I decided to go to my Japanese lessons as well as working from home. Of course me and my friends were all in close contact. We also decided to have a picnic all together the next Sunday, in order to spend and share good time after all of this stressful situation, as well as to put all together some money to donate to the Japan Red Cross. We stayed watchful with the the situation and news of course, but being all together is an important thing in those kind of circumstances isn't it? Yoyogi Park was full of people on that day!
We all thought the best thing was to stay in Japan and do our best to help our friends or relatives here. Japan has always been a very welcome country so the idea to leave overnight didn’t even cross our minds. What about our friends here, all of the people that we met? Are we here just to enjoy the best parts of it and flee as soon as some difficulties happen? In retrospect we all think we made the good decision to stay.
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