2008-07-26 - 12:06 a.m.
"Kowai! KOWAI!! FUCK! Nigete!" (Footnote One)
I'm scrambling towards the balcony. Literally. I'm using the walls and furniture to support myself as if one of my legs were broken or I was really, really drunk. Despite this, however, I'm moving quickly. I'm moving so quickly that I'm kind of impressed with myself.
I realized that my plan had been to escape only to the balcony when I heard the sound of glass smashing in the apartment and this plan, consequently, changed. I hopped over the balcony, barefoot, and landed in the pirate garden. The smell of Italian food informed me that I was trampling the basil. (Footnote Two)
Shuhei stays on the balcony. He passes me some slippers, tells me to be careful, that windows on the second floor might start breaking, and looks quite calm, which is both reassuring and oddly annoying. I, meanwhile, am experiencing the heart-pounding and dry-throatiness of stress hormones and am mentally planning a route over the fence and into the very middle of the field next door where breaking glass, falling utility poles, collapsing buildings, nothing short of the earth splitting in two and swallowing me up whole, will be able to hurt me.
Happily, things don't go that far. In less than a minute I'm worried about bugs almost as much as I'm worried about earthquakes.
We go back inside. The apartment looks exactly how you would imagine an apartment to look after an earthquake. Things have fallen off of the walls and from shelves. The fridge and some cupboards have opened themselves and puked on the floor. The oven and the washing machine are now at angles that aren't perpendicular to the wall. Plants have tipped over and bled dirt on the floor. And so on and so forth. Impressively, the Seven Lucky Gods haven't budged, nor has my nailed-together-wooden-fruit-crate bookshelf come apart. We were worried about them, but they've now proven our doubts to be groundless twice in a month. Good for them.
There's broken glass on the floor. Shuhei cleans that up first. (Footnote Three) I wander from room to room, checking out the results of the first-earthquake-I've-experienced-that-broke-stuff for a while. The first thing that I end up picking up is Beyonce One and Beyonce Two. (Footnote Four) We've been lucky, asides from a couple of picture frames and some dishes that I didn't care about, the only real casualty has been my tanuki statue, which has since proven difficult to glue back together.
Shuhei can't get through to Team Numasawa Headquarters (his family home) on the phone, which is a little worrying. I tell him to go over there, that I've got things under control. Since telephones are proving unreliable, I tell him that if he isn't back by 2:00am, and hour and a half from now, I'm coming over to Team Numasawa Headquarters too. Again, I'm quietly impressed with how well I'm dealing with my first real earthquake.
An hour later I'm done cleaning. It occurs to me that if I'm done tidying up already, everyone else is going to be done soon too and this might be my only chance to get out and observe the mayhem. Secretly, I'm also becoming more and more afraid of aftershocks and less and less happy about being alone.
So I head out towards Headquarters too. To be honest, the scene outside is a little disappointing. I can hear sirens in the distance. It's unusual for the lights to be on in so many households at this hour, and I can overhear a lot of people complaining. But mayhem it is not.
I guess that's a good thing.
Halfway between the apartment and Headquarters I meet up with Shuhei on his way home. Lots of stuff, mainly dishes, fell and broke at Headquarters, but nobody is hurt.
That night I dreamt I was walking through a moldy orchard filled with big, menacing tropical flowers and lots of bugs.
The next day it occurs to me that this earthquake should've been seen coming. I mean, it seems to me much more likely than it is unlikely that Japan could create a better earthquake warning system than that which exists now, which tells you that there's an earthquake ten seconds to three minutes after an earthquake has started. I felt a lot of little earthquakes before this one happened. It's not unusual to have two or three little earthquakes in a day here, but I'm talking about dozens of little earthquakes. Also, in retrospect, birds had been acting really strangely that day. (I'm not joking.)
I'm not suggesting that a conspiracy exists. But I'm not not suggesting a conspiracy exists either. To be honest, even if the government had come around evacuating people because there may or may not be a big earthquake soon, I wouldn't want to go. (The closest that I've experienced to an evacuation was the Blizzard of '96, when I was stranded in Chilliwack for three days and had to sleep at the Rec Centre there. The army set up really stiff cots for us to sleep on and made watery-tasting chilli. Ellen threw up. It stank.) Still, the fact that I maybe could have seen this earthquake coming strongly suggests that the people who actually know about these things could have seen it coming and makes the earthquake seem much more sinister to me than it had before.
It's also a little creepy how quickly things return to normal. By noon there are no longer any signs that the earthquake happened at all. It's strangely disappointing to me that I've been through a minor trauma and, only twelve hours later, have no proof of it. I decide to make lotus root burgers for dinner. Partly because I've been craving burgers, but mostly because this means that I'll have to stop at the grocery store for ground beef on my way home and I'm confident that the grocery store will still be a scene that will satisfy my desire to witness a little disorder. (Footnote Five)
But even at the grocery store, everything is business as usual. In the alcohol section, most of the cans are at least a little dented. Asides from that there are no signs that the earthquake ever took place.
Later, Shuhei asks me why there's a five yen coin tied to a long piece of thread and thumbtacked to the ceiling. It's my earthquake detector. I can't tell if I've been feeling little earthquakes, if I'm paranoid and imagining them, or if I'm just so tired that my balance is a little off. Not knowing which is making me feel really neurotic, hence the earthquake detector. Sadly, the earthquake detector doesn't answer any questions. Rather, it only raises the question of whether or not it works.
In conclusion, I'm a terrible person. I experienced a potential disaster and very quickly began to see it as little more than a source of entertainment for myself. My sense of balance still feels strange and I'm now considering the possibility that the earthquake not only broke my tanuki statue, but also gave me MS. Japan's Meteorological Agency may or may not be hiding terrible secrets and - unless they feed evacuees lotus root burgers - I don't especially care if they are.
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Footnote One: That is: "Scary! SCARY!! FUCK! Let's get out of here!"
Footnote Two: Screw the basil. The basil didn't sprout everywhere it was planted and the sprouts that did appear are growing painfully slowly. So screw the basil. Better that it die than me.
Footnote Three: This was a wise move on Shuhei's behalf, as he knows my approach to cleaning. That is that things don't have to be cleaned perfectly because whatever I miss this time I'll get next time. Or maybe the time after that. Shuhei cleans less often than I do, but he also does a much better job. Incidentally, this is also how Michael cleans.
Footnote Four: Beyonce One and Beyonce Two are the greatest dolls that I have ever seen. They are basically visual racial slurs and I love them. Beyonce One was purchased at a thrift store for ten yen. (Think ten cents.) Beyonce Two was found at a different thrift store for 680 yen. Beyonce Two was filthy and shouldn't have cost more than two hundred yen, but since I already had Beyonce One, I couldn't very well pass up on Beyonce Two. Beyonces are now one of the things I keep an eye open for at thrift stores, hoping to expand this collection.
Footnote Five: Lotus root burgers are less exotic than they sound, but still very tasty. Perpared lotus root is cheap. I'm basically using it (along with bread crumbs and sometimes freeze-dried tofu) as a meat extender. The lotus root doesn't have much taste of its own, but it stays crunchy kind of like a pickle even when it's cooked and, trust me, it tastes really good in burgers.
