It was an ordinary day. I'd been sneezing a lot due to a cold I caught the day before and was a little disappointed at how the sections had been divided up. Lunch, homework, sitting in my room during the gap between my Japanese lessons and the Japanese Culture and Art lecture. Routine. Commonplace. Everyday. Words I can still use to describe how I spent the eleventh of March, yet for others it was anything but. I found myself feeling dizzy after a sneeze - was this a very bad cold? No, the movement had nothing to do with me. Rough tides, then? I was on land. Earthquake.
Some 300 miles away in Sendai carnage was being unleashed and people were dying as this "Mega-Quake" moved Honshu east, made the Earth wobble and speed up its rotation and who knows what else. Yet in Nagoya, where the quake registered a mere 3.5 magnitude, I cringe to say that I noted the moving of the earth with nothing more than amused curiosity. Does this make me sound callous? I must stress that I was completely oblivious to the disaster. In our high-speed information age, people across the world knew about it before I did. During my lecture an announcement came on over the speaker system advising people to contact anyone they knew from the Tohoku region and warning of incoming tsunamis (only about a meter high for Nagoya). It just seemed like a natural occurrence and that everyone went about their business as usual.
That's my safe and uneventful experience of this quake. The truth is Japan is a big place and I only got to hear of the real damage done when the news told me. Lots of people lots their lives or homes or families, which is a very sad thing. I feel like all I can do is spout clichés, but I'm sure we can try to honour the memory of those who have passed on, and I'm sure that as a country Japan will get back on its feet.
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| Encouragement |
