The ramen shop was flooded with light and familiar smells. My wife and I, our boys between us, sat across the low table from Jun, his brother Yu and his friend (girlfriend?) Miki. We ate as we would on any night, though the cooks couldn’t make a couple of dishes for lack of certain ingredients. We talked as we would over any meal – hometowns and high school memories, jobs and friends and the soft-boiled eggs Yu had this thing about. Yamato slurped his noodles, splattering his soup. Seiji fussed and laughed and ate and refused in turns. The radiation we had run from seemed far, far away.
Yet the reason we were there wouldn’t fade from my head. Not completely. Not for a moment.
Back at Yu’s apartment we would share snack food and drink a random assortment of beer in cans. Yamato was given his first taste of video games and Harry Potter. Seiji entertained before he started tiring; my wife would skip his bath tonight and try to get him down. We talked more, about all manner of things, though somehow – as it seems to happen in Japan – we never scratched too deep below the surface. This because maybe the Japanese are inclined on all levels to remain one of the group; tipping the conversational scales in any one person’s direction, particularly their own, is not the overriding inclination.
On this night we had all we needed to keep ourselves connected without anyone standing out.
As the evening drew on we fell fully back into reality. ‘Flights out of Akita are full for the next two days,’ Yu said, pecking at his laptop with one hand, thumbing his cell phone with the other. Jun coaxed what information he could out of a second laptop, looking for options for a family with no specific wants save one: get us out of Japan as soon as possible. ‘Tokyo might be overrun with people trying to leave.’ Herds of weary travelers sleeping on the terminal floors, waiting for a seat to open up – it wasn’t hard to imagine. ‘Do you want to try to fly to Itami and then transfer to Kansai International? Or maybe fly to Seoul?’ So went the conversation with Jun and his brother, accidental hosts to a family of refugees. They were calm and intense at the same time as they searched for better options, quicker options, for getting us on a plane out of the country. Their country, which they most likely would not be leaving, no matter what melted or exploded in Fukushima.
Outside the snow continued to fall.
I posted a note on facebook, first in English, later in Japanese, for anyone with a friend in Morioka to let me know. Staying one night in Yu’s tiny apartment after hitching a four-hour ride with Jun was much more than we could have asked for, more than a neighbor who hadn’t found a moment in the past year to ask someone his name deserved. I sent text messages to friends in Tokyo and Osaka, even Nagano, not knowing where we might end up, nor when, asking for small favors based on ‘if’ and ‘we might’ and ‘by tomorrow we should know for sure’. A friend who I’d worked with in Osaka seven years previous and was now living in Tokyo dug up some info on the shuttle buses running between Haneda and Narita, Tokyo’s two main airports, offering to reserve seats for us and even, if needed, go ahead and pay. ‘Get me back whenever, don’t worry about it, just get yourselves out.’ A former student of mine from Osaka who now lived in Yokohama had gone back home to be with her family, away from the aftershocks and rolling blackouts. She had a young boy close to Yamato’s age. ‘If you need a place let me know,’ she replied. ‘Our house is not very big but we will make room for you.’ She lived minutes from Itami Airport. ‘It would be no trouble to come get you, and even drive you to Kansai International if you need me to.’ The food and gas shortages hadn’t reached the Kansai area; still, if they had, I was sure my friend wouldn’t have offered us anything less.
Jun and his brother kept at it on their laptops, thumbing their cell phones at the same time though it all seemed to be going nowhere. Mayumi finally got Seiji to sleep. Yamato fought to stay awake, engrossed by a fantastic make-believe world of wizards and magic. I continued with the text messages, alternately please and thank you to friends from various times of my life in Japan while offering similar sentiments, over and over, to our two new friends who had assumed, it seemed, the role of caretaker. And here I began to understand Jun’s hesitation back in front of our apartment building in Fukushima as I stood in the street asking him if we could join him in his car.
So much goes unspoken in Japanese society. When there is a barrier – cultural, linguistic – even more is left unsaid. Jun would probably never say, and I probably would never suggest, but I think his momentary reluctance (as much as I perceived it) to give us a ride to Morioka had nothing to do with taking us there but what he could or couldn’t do for us once we’d arrived. ‘I can only take you to Morioka,’ he had told me. ‘And I don’t know where you can stay, the hotels might be all full, I’m not sure.’ A few minutes later, as my wife and I scrambled to get our immediate future into two bags Jun called his brother to ask if he would let two adults and two little boys move in for the night. For me a ride to Morioka was more than enough, more than we could hope for at that moment and beyond. For Jun, I think there was more to it.
In Hokkaido Highway Blues Will Ferguson tells his story of hitch hiking the length of Japan. I only got through the first few chapters but that would be enough for any reader to get a sense of the Japanese spirit. Invariably, after the person picking Mr. Ferguson up asked where he was going they would tell him they were only going to the next town or village or office building. And then, invariably, that person would drive far beyond where they said they were going – as far as time and circumstance would allow if they didn’t end up taking him all the way to his day’s destination. With Jun, I think the same mindset prevailed.
He could only get us to Morioka, and while that was fine with us I truly believe he wanted to take us as far as we wanted to go. He wanted us to be taken care of, he wanted us to have a place to stay and a place to go afterwards and a way to get to wherever it was we were going – which we didn't know, standing in the street in Fukushima just trying to get out of town, would turn out to be America. And, rather than let us go without a plan, he wanted to make sure, right alongside his brother, that we had a plan and the means to carry it out. Jun was not just giving us a ride. He was getting us to our destination, in whatever way he could. In Japan, it is not enough to simply give what is asked for.
It was midnight by the time I was able to convince Jun and Yu to stop searching and call it a night. We weren’t going to make it to Tokyo or Osaka the next day in any event; the only buses out of Morioka the next day would be leaving too late to make any flight out of anywhere a possibility. ‘We’ll find something tomorrow,’ we agreed. Then my family stretched out on Yu’s bed while he and Jun talked quietly and fell asleep on Yu’s L-shaped couch.
In the morning we all shared what little food we had between us while we got back to scouring the Internet for answers. I harbored more frustration than hope – proving to myself once again I am not the father my family needs me to be, not when we need all the strength and faith we can muster. The minutes wore on, and we soon had to accept the reality that we had only one option for the day: a bus to Ohdate, in northern Akita prefecture, in striking distance of Ohdate-Noshiro Airport should we find a flight out of there. ‘Fine, let’s go,’ I said as if I was making any sort of real decision. ‘So how soon can we fly out?’ I expected a three-day wait, maybe a week, before getting to Tokyo, or Osaka. Maybe to Korea, maybe all the way to Europe; my aunt from Germany was now digging around too, looking for ways to get us out of Japan. Friends sent their support; several were ready to send money. This I knew I would politely refuse. If nothing else I had the monetary capacity to take care of my family.
Yu found a website advertising flights out of Tokyo the next day. ‘Going to New York City,’ he said. ‘On China Airlines.’ I’d once sworn, for several reasons, I’d never fly another Chinese airline. But for six hundred and forty bucks a seat – the next day, in the middle of a mass exodus – I’d put my lofty principles on hold. I could deal with curmudgeonly baggage handlers and snot-nosed flight attendants if it meant getting my family out of there. ‘Or Continental to…Newark?’ Yu looked up at me. ‘New Jersey?’ On the same direct flight I’d taken to get home so many times before. ‘No way,’ I grunted, in an instant stuck between hope and angry disbelief. Now is not the time to screw with me I thought, focusing on the faceless entity on the screen now before me.
Ten seconds of scrolling and staring told me one of two things: either every flight had seats available or this was just a schedule and did not reflect one god damn shred of reality. I grabbed my cell phone; in the next breath Jun and his brother were also dialing up Continental. All three of us, dialing and redialing, trying to get through to a human being. At the same time Yu checked for a flight from Ohdate to Tokyo the next day – which he found, to everyone’s amazement. Where were all these flights yesterday? There were plenty of empty seats too. Moments later I got through to the miracle I still wasn’t banking on: there were exactly four seats left on the next day’s Continental flight to Newark.
Jun drove us to the bus terminal in downtown Morioka, his brother coming along to see us off. ‘No work today,’ he told me though I got the feeling he would have come anyway. The streets were clear of snow and glaringly devoid of traffic. We’d only seen Morioka under cover of night and through thick swirling snows, enough to make anything possible in the imagination, even normalcy. In the gray daylight we saw the incongruity that had befallen every other city, village and field between Fukushima and here.
Office buildings rose like concrete shells, ten and twenty stories above the streets. Ramps and overpasses hung overhead, useless appendages lolling from the surrounding train station and adjacent bus terminal. Yawning intersections and comatose traffic lights, and block after cold, gray, inanimate block of a city that felt like it had long been deserted. Jun parked and flipped on his hazards, which would now seem a signal not that the owner would be right back but that the car hadn’t been altogether abandoned. In every direction, nothing but cement and an absence of life, in any form, save for the occasional car, hurrying, seemingly searching. We walked up a set of steps and emerged onto the elevated bus terminal, a loop that one week ago would be bustling with people. Today there was one line, for one bus – fifty people or more, standing in orderly manner. Many of them had bags in tow, gym bags or overnighters or compact suitcases, the kind that can be carried on board an airplane. All these people, all going the same way. The only way, perhaps, there was to go. All around us the city stood silent, a thousand windows of a thousand offices staring blankly out over the grays and whites of the world.
‘There are two buses,’ I heard someone say as more people appeared, lining up behind me and my older son. My wife sat with our little boy in the crowded waiting room, taking comfort perhaps in the notion that he was too little to understand – though not too young to know things had been very different these past several days. On the surface, both boys were going along with us effortlessly, even though the older one knew there were still earthquakes in the ground, and ‘bad gas’ in the air where we lived.
Jun and Yu smiled in the cold and snow, all too happy to continue waiting with us, passing back and forth between them our heavy green duffel they insisted on holding. I thanked them again for taking us in, for helping us find a way forward, for making sure we were safely on our way even as they would be staying behind. This was their country – and I was being treated like a king, ushered to safety by those who would remain to withstand the quake’s after-effects that had already turned their existence upside down. And though none of us would mention, it was possible that the worst was yet to come.
I kept thinking about Jun and Yu as our bus rumbled down the highway, taking us further north and west. The snow was blinding, the countryside awash in white. It was the middle of March, but winter was still alive and well and pummeling the land. We had our flights booked; our escape was lined up. Still, looking outside at a world that had never seemed so relentless I knew that any plans we had depended on the mercy of God and the earth. Everything was planned and paid for. And nothing was certain. Not in this place, not now.
The snow had abated by the time we pulled into the bus loop outside Ohdate Station. There were signs of life inside, though none of it had to do with the trains that weren’t moving. To the west, above the one-story shops and office blocks and houses in front of us, hotel façades rose up here and there. One of them was ours. It looked a mile and a half away.
Inside the girl at the front desk greeted us as she would greet anyone on any day. The hotel, I learned, was nowhere near capacity. Their restaurant was open, though the menu was extremely limited. We could use the hot spring bath until eleven. Breakfast would be available from 6:45 am – enough time to eat what we could before heading back to the station to catch the bus to Ohdate-Noshiro Airport. My boys wanted to play; they needed sleep. There was Internet access in the lobby.
I stared out the window of our room, over the town and the distant fields and the fading contours of dusk. My wife was giving our older boy a bath. My younger son sat in my arms, looking around at yet another new environment. The snow was falling again, hard as ever. There were lights out there, scattered and few, fending off the encroaching night. We needed to get to the airport in the morning. We needed our plane to take off. We needed to get from Haneda Airport to Narita, an hour and then some to the east, out in Chiba prefecture. We needed just one more day of luck and God’s grace, neither of which I felt certain of, even as - or because - we had already received more than our fair share. People had died in these days. Thousands and thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands had lost their homes, their livelihood, everything they had, past present and future. And these were the ones who would stay behind as my family and I took off to comfort ourselves on the other side of the world.
I didn’t deserve to be one of the lucky ones. No one deserved to lose everything, yet so many had. The people who had been so good to me, the countless kind souls who filled my life for the nine and a half years I made this place my home – I was leaving them all behind. Leaving them to face what I could not allow to hurt my sons. Leaving them to their shattered existence so I could pick up and create a new one in a place most of them could not go, or would not go, for this was their only home. I looked at my son’s reflection in the window. His face was blurred. He might have been smiling, thinking that everything was okay. He didn’t know how lucky he was to be here; didn’t know how lucky his father had needed to be, to compensate for his shortcomings. My little boy felt safe in my arms, because he didn’t know the truth. Right or wrong, this was what filled my thoughts, sank into my chest, forced itself up behind my eyes in a flood of emotion that had been building up for five days. My little boy would soon be safe, but only if things worked out. If the weather cleared; if the ground kept calm; if a thousand things his daddy couldn’t control somehow remained in our favor. I’d done nothing to get him this far; it was all due to people better than me, forces more powerful than my own mind and will. And so the rest would go. All I could do was hold him in my arms, like I had my older son at 2:46 pm on March 11th, and tell him everything was okay even though I had no idea if it would be. And whisper in his ear the only thing I knew for certain. ‘I love you, buddy,’ I said.
My head fell against the window, and I started sobbing.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
North - tohoku earthquake part six
I recognized the woman at the door immediately, despite the mask that covered her nose and mouth. I knew her daughter too, as one of my son’s many pre-school friends. ‘Konnichi-wa,’ I said, trying in vain to recall either of their names. The woman offered a slight bow, awkward enough with her daughter on her hip, forget about the underlying circumstances. ‘Kevin-san, domo.’ She handed me a small, heavy plastic bag.
My wife had said she’d be dropping by, with milk formula for our little boy. In the intervening moments I’d forgotten her name, but I remembered very clearly one thing my wife said: she was going to be driving to Sendai.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she said in response to my casual query. I glanced over at her boxy car, already half-stuffed with blankets and bags. ‘Are there any buses running out of Sendai, do you know?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘Maybe, but I don’t know.’ With this we both understood: I was looking for a way out of town, and while she really would like to help…
Even if we got to Sendai where would we stay?
I paid her for the milk, thanked her for her exceptional kindness – by now the common sentiment was that no one wanted to be outside any longer than necessary – and we wished each other luck.
My wife was holding our little boy at the top of the stairs. ‘What should we do?’ No gas in the car, no gas at the gas stations, no buses or trains and reports of rain clouds blowing in from the southeast. Damned if I knew what we were going to do – an answer that, for the first time in my life, wasn’t going to cut it. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have the option of passing for now, didn’t have the luxury of choosing my way, or saying screw it and choosing no way at all. Staying put, I’d be placing my family at risk – of something I didn’t even understand. I had to find an answer. I had to find a way where there was none. And it occurred to me that all my life I had been avoiding having to do exactly that. This time, for the first time, I couldn’t say screw it.
I called two friends; one had gas in his car but wasn’t going anywhere, the other would take off if he could. I wondered aloud if there might be any gas in my wife’s father’s truck, and if we maybe couldn’t siphon some out. Or maybe we could convince one of the neighbors to sell us the gas in their tank. Or do you think our car would run on kerosene? Do you want to try hitchhiking?
The idea surfaced in my head and I knew it wasn’t going away: I was failing my family.
‘Akita,’ my wife said, and I immediately felt something in me lift. I knew exactly what she was thinking.
Our neighbor, from downstairs and over one, was from Akita prefecture, a fair distance to the northwest. We only knew where he was from because of the license plate on his full-size Volvo wagon. We’d been neighbors for almost a year now, and while it was nothing out of the ordinary for Japan, I found it decidedly regrettable, on more than one level, that I still didn’t know his name.
I ran to the window and looked out at the parking lot. His car wasn’t there. I bounded down the stairs and threw open the door, expecting nothing but a deserted street.
There was his car, in front of his place. No one was inside, but the motor was running. Same with another car, waiting along the opposite curb. With my sneakers barely on my feet I jumped down the front steps. This, I knew, was the answer my family needed. The answer I needed. I eased over toward my neighbor’s open door. He plays soccer for Fukushima United, I reminded myself. He wears number six. Out of all the things to notice about a person I notice his laundry, hung to dry now and then out on his balcony.
‘Hey,’ I say as he appears from his darkened front hallway. He smiles. He always smiled when I said hey, as if inviting me over to trade a few words while wondering whether we’d have anything to say to each other. ‘Hey,’ he says back, and I hate that I don’t know his name.
He was on his way to Morioka, he told me, to visit his brother before continuing on to Akita and his home. His girlfriend wasn’t going with him; she’d be staying with her family, right there in town. The look in his eyes as he said this told me he didn’t think she was making the right decision but who was he to tell her to leave her family behind. This, I didn’t mention, was exactly what my wife had already decided to do.
In the next few seconds a silence hung between us. There was no room for small talk here, no time to get to know each other first before stumbling into the conversation we both knew was coming. And as helpful and generous as Japanese people are inclined or bred to be, I sensed a reluctance on my neighbor’s part – a guy I knew not by name but by a number – to let us into his car and his plans and his immediate future as our best friend and savior. And just for a moment, I hesitated.
To hell with pride, dignity and social graces. This was my chance to get my family out of town.
‘I can only take you to Morioka,’ he said. That was fine. It was fantastic. ‘And I’m not sure where you can stay. The hotels might be full.’ He probably knew as well as I did the situation – in other words, he didn’t have any idea either. ‘We’ll figure it out once we get there…if you can get us there…’
In every other situation, in every other moment of my life, I would have felt like I was imposing and ended up offering the guy an out. If you’re too busy… If there’s not enough room… We can probably get a ride from someone else… But not today. Not now.
‘Can you wait ten minutes?’
For the next twenty-five minutes our new friend waited – ‘I’m Jun,’ he said with a smile – while my wife and I stuffed into two big bags everything we thought we might need for a few days or weeks or maybe a month or two. ‘Put a few books and some cars or trains in your backpack,’ I told my son. ‘Okay,’ he sang, grabbing his Thomas the Tank Engine book bag and picking out what he wanted to bring as if we were going to Grandma’s for the night. We packed a few plastic bags with what food we could eat straight out of the box or bag or can; my wife took care of the baby’s stuff while I took four of everything from my older son’s dresser and stuck it all in with mine. My wife grabbed our passports and her cameras (leaving the battery chargers behind). I slipped a notebook into my backpack, leaving laptop, flash drives and ten years worth of photographs for another day.
‘Switch your main breaker off,’ Jun said as I packed our bags into his car, on and among his own stuff. ‘And bring some blankets if you can.’ Blankets? ‘Yes, it is still very cold in Morioka and my brother doesn’t have many extra blankets.’ This sentence, simple and bloated with meaning, told me that I’d heard what I thought I heard Jun say into his phone as I was dragging our bags down the steps to our front door. Number Six was doing what I had seen so many people do in the past few days, and what so many people I would read about later would do. Jun was reaching out, helping where help was needed. My neighbor, whose name I’d never bothered to learn, was being, simply, Japanese.
I was tearing up and down the stairs, going back for odds and ends as I thought of them. ‘Sorry, I’m really sorry,’ I said, finding side pockets and empty spaces to cram things into. ‘No problem,’ Jun said as if we were not yet late for a picnic. His girlfriend too waited patiently, texting someone as she stood in Jun’s doorway. At long last we locked our front door, too much in a rush at this point to pause and wonder when we might be back. ‘Maybe you should put your masks on,’ Jun said easily as we drove off, raindrops dotting the windshield.
On the news I’d seen one structure in town – an old three-story school building – that had partially collapsed. Other than that I’d only seen toppled three-foot cinder block walls, old wooden fences leaning over into the weeds and a few new bumps and divots in the sidewalks. On the way to Jun’s girlfriend’s house it was a different if not entirely catastrophic picture. A lot of the homes in that neighborhood were of a more traditional type, with rooftops made of clay tiles. Here and there they sat broken now, in piles under the eaves and scattered in gardens, the holes in the places where they’d fallen from now covered with swaths of blue tarp.
I expected Route 4 to be snarled with traffic, half the city headed south toward Tokyo, half crawling toward Sendai and parts further north. But there were only a handful of us waiting at any given red light. Cars were scarce; commercial trucks were all but non-existent. As we passed through Kunimi and Koori and headed for the countryside the road population thinned to almost nothing.
The world itself looked no different. The road was the road, lined with buildings and stretches of forest and field. Cars were cars, and while there were fewer of them than usual this could be explained away if need be. No one was speeding or driving recklessly; abandoned storefronts – the only visible clues to the altered state of existence – were left undisturbed and alone. No sirens, not even a patrol car. Then we came upon a small one-story cement garage crumbling in on itself, waiting, it seemed, for the next big aftershock, or gravity or a piece of heavy machinery to put it out of its misery. Soon we were crossing into Miyagi; signs for Sendai began appearing. I felt like we were delving into the mouth of some kind of invisible beast.
Conversation came in gentle spurts. I learned that Jun had recently traded in his number six for a coach’s jersey. He was from Ohdate, where my wife and I had actually gone a handful of years ago, to see a huge fireworks display. He liked Fukushima. He knew he and his friends could be a bit boisterous at night sometimes and apologized for the noise. He asked where we were from, and asked if we were planning on ever moving to the States. ‘It might be a good idea to leave Japan for a while,’ he said, that smile still hanging around. I told him if we did he was absolutely welcome to come visit us someday, and stay with us for a while, wherever we might be living. Jun said that sounded great. And while we were both being sincere, it felt like a conversation you have with people you don’t think you’ll ever see again.
Traffic turned heavy as we neared the heart of Sendai. Still, aside from the occasional ramen shop or convenience store with all-but-empty shelves, doors remained locked, windows remained dark, parking lots sat empty. At a roadside gas station light fixtures hung low, metal framing bent like a witch’s accusing fingers over the pumps. In a gravel lot rows of tour buses sat in noticeable disarray; three of them had rolled off into the surrounding drainage ditch. A cement factory silo, twenty meters tall, leaned like the Tower of Pisa. The road cleared again as we left Sendai behind, heading back out into a landscape of trees and rice fields and rivers where the only signs of the quake came in the form of uneven joints in the road where earth and bridge surfaces used to meet with barely a wrinkle. We had to slow down a little more at each successive bridge as we made our way into Iwate.
Jun took his mask off. I’d stripped mine off long ago. I offered to drive if he needed a break. He smiled and said he was fine. We talked about stopping for a bite to eat, but we just kept on moving north. I dug out my cell phone and answered messages, one by one, left by friends who had taken off and friends who, for one reason or another, were staying behind, at least for the time being. The words we all used differed but the basic message was the same: Take good care, stay safe, and I’ll see you again when it’s over.
In the back seat my older son looked at picture books and fiddled with his toy cars. I wondered what he might say to his pre-school friends, if he only knew.
My wife had said she’d be dropping by, with milk formula for our little boy. In the intervening moments I’d forgotten her name, but I remembered very clearly one thing my wife said: she was going to be driving to Sendai.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she said in response to my casual query. I glanced over at her boxy car, already half-stuffed with blankets and bags. ‘Are there any buses running out of Sendai, do you know?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘Maybe, but I don’t know.’ With this we both understood: I was looking for a way out of town, and while she really would like to help…
Even if we got to Sendai where would we stay?
I paid her for the milk, thanked her for her exceptional kindness – by now the common sentiment was that no one wanted to be outside any longer than necessary – and we wished each other luck.
My wife was holding our little boy at the top of the stairs. ‘What should we do?’ No gas in the car, no gas at the gas stations, no buses or trains and reports of rain clouds blowing in from the southeast. Damned if I knew what we were going to do – an answer that, for the first time in my life, wasn’t going to cut it. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have the option of passing for now, didn’t have the luxury of choosing my way, or saying screw it and choosing no way at all. Staying put, I’d be placing my family at risk – of something I didn’t even understand. I had to find an answer. I had to find a way where there was none. And it occurred to me that all my life I had been avoiding having to do exactly that. This time, for the first time, I couldn’t say screw it.
I called two friends; one had gas in his car but wasn’t going anywhere, the other would take off if he could. I wondered aloud if there might be any gas in my wife’s father’s truck, and if we maybe couldn’t siphon some out. Or maybe we could convince one of the neighbors to sell us the gas in their tank. Or do you think our car would run on kerosene? Do you want to try hitchhiking?
The idea surfaced in my head and I knew it wasn’t going away: I was failing my family.
‘Akita,’ my wife said, and I immediately felt something in me lift. I knew exactly what she was thinking.
Our neighbor, from downstairs and over one, was from Akita prefecture, a fair distance to the northwest. We only knew where he was from because of the license plate on his full-size Volvo wagon. We’d been neighbors for almost a year now, and while it was nothing out of the ordinary for Japan, I found it decidedly regrettable, on more than one level, that I still didn’t know his name.
I ran to the window and looked out at the parking lot. His car wasn’t there. I bounded down the stairs and threw open the door, expecting nothing but a deserted street.
There was his car, in front of his place. No one was inside, but the motor was running. Same with another car, waiting along the opposite curb. With my sneakers barely on my feet I jumped down the front steps. This, I knew, was the answer my family needed. The answer I needed. I eased over toward my neighbor’s open door. He plays soccer for Fukushima United, I reminded myself. He wears number six. Out of all the things to notice about a person I notice his laundry, hung to dry now and then out on his balcony.
‘Hey,’ I say as he appears from his darkened front hallway. He smiles. He always smiled when I said hey, as if inviting me over to trade a few words while wondering whether we’d have anything to say to each other. ‘Hey,’ he says back, and I hate that I don’t know his name.
He was on his way to Morioka, he told me, to visit his brother before continuing on to Akita and his home. His girlfriend wasn’t going with him; she’d be staying with her family, right there in town. The look in his eyes as he said this told me he didn’t think she was making the right decision but who was he to tell her to leave her family behind. This, I didn’t mention, was exactly what my wife had already decided to do.
In the next few seconds a silence hung between us. There was no room for small talk here, no time to get to know each other first before stumbling into the conversation we both knew was coming. And as helpful and generous as Japanese people are inclined or bred to be, I sensed a reluctance on my neighbor’s part – a guy I knew not by name but by a number – to let us into his car and his plans and his immediate future as our best friend and savior. And just for a moment, I hesitated.
To hell with pride, dignity and social graces. This was my chance to get my family out of town.
‘I can only take you to Morioka,’ he said. That was fine. It was fantastic. ‘And I’m not sure where you can stay. The hotels might be full.’ He probably knew as well as I did the situation – in other words, he didn’t have any idea either. ‘We’ll figure it out once we get there…if you can get us there…’
In every other situation, in every other moment of my life, I would have felt like I was imposing and ended up offering the guy an out. If you’re too busy… If there’s not enough room… We can probably get a ride from someone else… But not today. Not now.
‘Can you wait ten minutes?’
For the next twenty-five minutes our new friend waited – ‘I’m Jun,’ he said with a smile – while my wife and I stuffed into two big bags everything we thought we might need for a few days or weeks or maybe a month or two. ‘Put a few books and some cars or trains in your backpack,’ I told my son. ‘Okay,’ he sang, grabbing his Thomas the Tank Engine book bag and picking out what he wanted to bring as if we were going to Grandma’s for the night. We packed a few plastic bags with what food we could eat straight out of the box or bag or can; my wife took care of the baby’s stuff while I took four of everything from my older son’s dresser and stuck it all in with mine. My wife grabbed our passports and her cameras (leaving the battery chargers behind). I slipped a notebook into my backpack, leaving laptop, flash drives and ten years worth of photographs for another day.
‘Switch your main breaker off,’ Jun said as I packed our bags into his car, on and among his own stuff. ‘And bring some blankets if you can.’ Blankets? ‘Yes, it is still very cold in Morioka and my brother doesn’t have many extra blankets.’ This sentence, simple and bloated with meaning, told me that I’d heard what I thought I heard Jun say into his phone as I was dragging our bags down the steps to our front door. Number Six was doing what I had seen so many people do in the past few days, and what so many people I would read about later would do. Jun was reaching out, helping where help was needed. My neighbor, whose name I’d never bothered to learn, was being, simply, Japanese.
I was tearing up and down the stairs, going back for odds and ends as I thought of them. ‘Sorry, I’m really sorry,’ I said, finding side pockets and empty spaces to cram things into. ‘No problem,’ Jun said as if we were not yet late for a picnic. His girlfriend too waited patiently, texting someone as she stood in Jun’s doorway. At long last we locked our front door, too much in a rush at this point to pause and wonder when we might be back. ‘Maybe you should put your masks on,’ Jun said easily as we drove off, raindrops dotting the windshield.
On the news I’d seen one structure in town – an old three-story school building – that had partially collapsed. Other than that I’d only seen toppled three-foot cinder block walls, old wooden fences leaning over into the weeds and a few new bumps and divots in the sidewalks. On the way to Jun’s girlfriend’s house it was a different if not entirely catastrophic picture. A lot of the homes in that neighborhood were of a more traditional type, with rooftops made of clay tiles. Here and there they sat broken now, in piles under the eaves and scattered in gardens, the holes in the places where they’d fallen from now covered with swaths of blue tarp.
I expected Route 4 to be snarled with traffic, half the city headed south toward Tokyo, half crawling toward Sendai and parts further north. But there were only a handful of us waiting at any given red light. Cars were scarce; commercial trucks were all but non-existent. As we passed through Kunimi and Koori and headed for the countryside the road population thinned to almost nothing.
The world itself looked no different. The road was the road, lined with buildings and stretches of forest and field. Cars were cars, and while there were fewer of them than usual this could be explained away if need be. No one was speeding or driving recklessly; abandoned storefronts – the only visible clues to the altered state of existence – were left undisturbed and alone. No sirens, not even a patrol car. Then we came upon a small one-story cement garage crumbling in on itself, waiting, it seemed, for the next big aftershock, or gravity or a piece of heavy machinery to put it out of its misery. Soon we were crossing into Miyagi; signs for Sendai began appearing. I felt like we were delving into the mouth of some kind of invisible beast.
Conversation came in gentle spurts. I learned that Jun had recently traded in his number six for a coach’s jersey. He was from Ohdate, where my wife and I had actually gone a handful of years ago, to see a huge fireworks display. He liked Fukushima. He knew he and his friends could be a bit boisterous at night sometimes and apologized for the noise. He asked where we were from, and asked if we were planning on ever moving to the States. ‘It might be a good idea to leave Japan for a while,’ he said, that smile still hanging around. I told him if we did he was absolutely welcome to come visit us someday, and stay with us for a while, wherever we might be living. Jun said that sounded great. And while we were both being sincere, it felt like a conversation you have with people you don’t think you’ll ever see again.
Traffic turned heavy as we neared the heart of Sendai. Still, aside from the occasional ramen shop or convenience store with all-but-empty shelves, doors remained locked, windows remained dark, parking lots sat empty. At a roadside gas station light fixtures hung low, metal framing bent like a witch’s accusing fingers over the pumps. In a gravel lot rows of tour buses sat in noticeable disarray; three of them had rolled off into the surrounding drainage ditch. A cement factory silo, twenty meters tall, leaned like the Tower of Pisa. The road cleared again as we left Sendai behind, heading back out into a landscape of trees and rice fields and rivers where the only signs of the quake came in the form of uneven joints in the road where earth and bridge surfaces used to meet with barely a wrinkle. We had to slow down a little more at each successive bridge as we made our way into Iwate.
Jun took his mask off. I’d stripped mine off long ago. I offered to drive if he needed a break. He smiled and said he was fine. We talked about stopping for a bite to eat, but we just kept on moving north. I dug out my cell phone and answered messages, one by one, left by friends who had taken off and friends who, for one reason or another, were staying behind, at least for the time being. The words we all used differed but the basic message was the same: Take good care, stay safe, and I’ll see you again when it’s over.
In the back seat my older son looked at picture books and fiddled with his toy cars. I wondered what he might say to his pre-school friends, if he only knew.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Things, We Didn't Know - tohoku earthquake part five
The subject of the text message was simple: 'Run!'
With this one word all the thoughts I'd fallen asleep to came crashing back into my head. My friend had spent the night thirty miles up the road in Yonezawa. 'We'll go further today, if we can,' he said.
If we can?...
In my head it sounded right out of a movie, too dramatic to be real. And he wasn't the only person I knew who was already heading west, away from the nuclear reactors leaking God-knows-what-if-anything into the air. A co-worker of mine, one of the sharpest and most level-headed guys I've ever met, had also hit the road. He too was with his family, making his way toward the Sea of Japan, unsure of their destination, living out of their car. 'Just to be on the safe side,' he said.
This made everything seem both more sane and more weird.
An explosion at a nuclear reactor is not welcome news, particularly when it comes from your own backyard. Holy shit I heard myself say as I stared at my computer screen, head blank except for those two words and a full-color apocalyptic image. But nothing else I had found made mention of anything like casualties, evacuation orders or even a general warning beyond a glib 'stay inside'. That a nuclear reactor could explode without frying the surrounding area let alone the entire hemisphere was news to me, and the thought crept into my head that either no one knows for sure what the hell is going on or else they're just not telling us.
'Those cars were there at six o'clock this morning,' my wife said as we congregated for breakfast. She pointed out the window and past the veranda at three cars parked along the stretch of visible curb. 'What do you think?'
'I want pancakes,' my son said, stepping carefully (more or less) past the dishes and glasses and appliances crowding the kitchen floor.
It was a little before nine. On a normal day the stores would still be closed; for the past two days nothing had been open. 'Waiting for something,' I said, not sure what they might be waiting for until finally it hit me: 'Gas.'
The closest station was easily three hundred meters away. I knew we didn't have much in our tank; we would have driven out to my wife's parents' place otherwise. Better fill up as soon as we can, I thought. Just to be on the safe side.
Three hours later I was out at the curb listening to a woman tell me she'd been waiting in line since eight.
After breakfast, with my wife watching the news and my boys playing with trains and cars and noisy things made in China, I'd gotten back to googling for anything I could find. Reports about the reactor situation hadn't changed, but there was now a designated area within a certain radius of the Daiichi complex where people were being told to stay indoors. 'A precautionary measure,' or so went the story.
That vague fear I'd first felt on Friday night returned.
I did some research on the reactors - their construction, their innards and their age. I found out that the reported explosion had likely occurred and only impacted the upper chamber of the reactor; good news in that the main compartment remained intact, bad news in that this upper area was where spent fuel rods were being stored. Radioactive material was now leaking into the air. It might have been a disaster in the making. It might have been nothing, at least to us, fifty miles and one mountain range away. Maybe this will happen, maybe that won't. Stay inside and keep your windows closed within twenty kilometers.
Outside I saw two people, my neighbor from across the street and a girl riding her bicycle. They both wore white masks over their nose and mouth. I spoke with a friend on the phone: 'The wind will blow in from the ocean,' he explained in precise English. 'We will have acid rain tonight.' The television told us the same, in between reports of a rising death toll and clips of Yukio Edano, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, saddled with the unenviable job of telling the nation and the world just what was going on and what they were going to do about it. I scoured the Net for information on the buses and trains running out of Fukushima; most pages had no updated schedules posted, a couple indicated all service had stopped. Nowhere could I find what I wanted to hear.
My inbox overflowed with day-old messages of joy and relief that we were okay.
A friend of my wife's stopped by with a can of baby formula she'd just picked up for us. She had a mask on, as did her three-year-old daughter. She'd be leaving for Sendai the next day, to be with her family. 'Are you staying here?' she asked.
The line of cars outside our balcony wasn't moving. I couldn't remember if the ones there now were the same ones I'd seen at breakfast. 'I'll be right back,' I told my wife and ran out the door.
Four hours the woman had been waiting. She looked equal parts calm and worried and resigned. Behind her the line of cars stretched out of sight; beyond the traffic light up ahead they disappeared around a corner. I started jogging, then running, cutting through the parking lot of the electronics store to the side street that ran past the back entrance to the gas station. The line of cars stood like a disrupted funeral procession; a quarter mile down, past the park with the sandbox my son loved to go to, the row of cars bent left, then left again to run back up the main road and into the gas station's front entrance. A mile of waiting cars, easily. Plus a crowd of people at the kerosene pumps. Men wearing the gas station's logo on their backs worked frantically. Two of them started scribbling on large pieces of cardboard.
申し訳ありませんが、ガス売り切り。We are sorry, no more gas.
Life had become a movie. The movie had turned into real life. The world I knew had ceased to exist, replaced with something that I did not feel a part of, even as I began wondering how the hell I was going to escape. I ran back down the road, across the empty parking lot. One of the lucky ones sped through the dead traffic light at the corner. My neighbor had gone inside. From the couch my wife looked up at me. 'What did you find out?'
I looked at her. I looked at my boys. I looked at Yukio Edano.
With this one word all the thoughts I'd fallen asleep to came crashing back into my head. My friend had spent the night thirty miles up the road in Yonezawa. 'We'll go further today, if we can,' he said.
If we can?...
In my head it sounded right out of a movie, too dramatic to be real. And he wasn't the only person I knew who was already heading west, away from the nuclear reactors leaking God-knows-what-if-anything into the air. A co-worker of mine, one of the sharpest and most level-headed guys I've ever met, had also hit the road. He too was with his family, making his way toward the Sea of Japan, unsure of their destination, living out of their car. 'Just to be on the safe side,' he said.
This made everything seem both more sane and more weird.
An explosion at a nuclear reactor is not welcome news, particularly when it comes from your own backyard. Holy shit I heard myself say as I stared at my computer screen, head blank except for those two words and a full-color apocalyptic image. But nothing else I had found made mention of anything like casualties, evacuation orders or even a general warning beyond a glib 'stay inside'. That a nuclear reactor could explode without frying the surrounding area let alone the entire hemisphere was news to me, and the thought crept into my head that either no one knows for sure what the hell is going on or else they're just not telling us.
'Those cars were there at six o'clock this morning,' my wife said as we congregated for breakfast. She pointed out the window and past the veranda at three cars parked along the stretch of visible curb. 'What do you think?'
'I want pancakes,' my son said, stepping carefully (more or less) past the dishes and glasses and appliances crowding the kitchen floor.
It was a little before nine. On a normal day the stores would still be closed; for the past two days nothing had been open. 'Waiting for something,' I said, not sure what they might be waiting for until finally it hit me: 'Gas.'
The closest station was easily three hundred meters away. I knew we didn't have much in our tank; we would have driven out to my wife's parents' place otherwise. Better fill up as soon as we can, I thought. Just to be on the safe side.
Three hours later I was out at the curb listening to a woman tell me she'd been waiting in line since eight.
After breakfast, with my wife watching the news and my boys playing with trains and cars and noisy things made in China, I'd gotten back to googling for anything I could find. Reports about the reactor situation hadn't changed, but there was now a designated area within a certain radius of the Daiichi complex where people were being told to stay indoors. 'A precautionary measure,' or so went the story.
That vague fear I'd first felt on Friday night returned.
I did some research on the reactors - their construction, their innards and their age. I found out that the reported explosion had likely occurred and only impacted the upper chamber of the reactor; good news in that the main compartment remained intact, bad news in that this upper area was where spent fuel rods were being stored. Radioactive material was now leaking into the air. It might have been a disaster in the making. It might have been nothing, at least to us, fifty miles and one mountain range away. Maybe this will happen, maybe that won't. Stay inside and keep your windows closed within twenty kilometers.
Outside I saw two people, my neighbor from across the street and a girl riding her bicycle. They both wore white masks over their nose and mouth. I spoke with a friend on the phone: 'The wind will blow in from the ocean,' he explained in precise English. 'We will have acid rain tonight.' The television told us the same, in between reports of a rising death toll and clips of Yukio Edano, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, saddled with the unenviable job of telling the nation and the world just what was going on and what they were going to do about it. I scoured the Net for information on the buses and trains running out of Fukushima; most pages had no updated schedules posted, a couple indicated all service had stopped. Nowhere could I find what I wanted to hear.
My inbox overflowed with day-old messages of joy and relief that we were okay.
A friend of my wife's stopped by with a can of baby formula she'd just picked up for us. She had a mask on, as did her three-year-old daughter. She'd be leaving for Sendai the next day, to be with her family. 'Are you staying here?' she asked.
The line of cars outside our balcony wasn't moving. I couldn't remember if the ones there now were the same ones I'd seen at breakfast. 'I'll be right back,' I told my wife and ran out the door.
Four hours the woman had been waiting. She looked equal parts calm and worried and resigned. Behind her the line of cars stretched out of sight; beyond the traffic light up ahead they disappeared around a corner. I started jogging, then running, cutting through the parking lot of the electronics store to the side street that ran past the back entrance to the gas station. The line of cars stood like a disrupted funeral procession; a quarter mile down, past the park with the sandbox my son loved to go to, the row of cars bent left, then left again to run back up the main road and into the gas station's front entrance. A mile of waiting cars, easily. Plus a crowd of people at the kerosene pumps. Men wearing the gas station's logo on their backs worked frantically. Two of them started scribbling on large pieces of cardboard.
申し訳ありませんが、ガス売り切り。We are sorry, no more gas.
Life had become a movie. The movie had turned into real life. The world I knew had ceased to exist, replaced with something that I did not feel a part of, even as I began wondering how the hell I was going to escape. I ran back down the road, across the empty parking lot. One of the lucky ones sped through the dead traffic light at the corner. My neighbor had gone inside. From the couch my wife looked up at me. 'What did you find out?'
I looked at her. I looked at my boys. I looked at Yukio Edano.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Home, Neighbors, Cake & What's Coming - tohoku earthquake part four
After faking his own death Huckleberry Finn hides in a tree outside a church window, looking in on all the townfolk crying at his funeral. 'I never had any idea so many people cared about old Huck Finn,' he says as the tears well in his own eyes.
Of all the scenes of all the movies, all the passages in all the books I've ever read, this was the one that came to mind as I stared at the screen of my laptop soon after returning home on Sunday.
The population of the shelter was about half what it had been the first night. In the morning air I felt a mix of restlessness and lethargy; the aftershocks had all but ceased, and though they'd probably keep the gym open for anyone wanting to stay, I knew it was time for us to go home - utilities or no.
First, however, we'd accept three rations of breakfast bread plus a sponge roll cake from the men in the windbreakers still working on all our behalf.
We weren't going to be able to fit all our futons and blankets and kids into the car at once without raising a few Child Welfare & Social Service eyebrows; I'd have to make two trips. The futons, much more relaxed and manageable than my sugared up son, would go first.
At home I found the electricity had come back. Five minutes later, with the old Model T laptop warmed up and my inbox overflowing with the thoughts and prayers and hopes and pleas of countless good people, I turned into Huck Finn in a tree.
--------------
My older son got right back to playing with his cars and trains; he didn't seem to even notice that half the apartment was now scattered all over the floor. Our younger boy, who just a few days ago had taken his first real steps, clung to his mommy as if he knew something bad had happened and might again at any time. My wife flipped the TV on, watching the images of devastation we now knew all too well while listening to vague reports of problems at the nuclear power plants fifty miles to the southeast. I set about putting our apartment and our life (so it felt) back in order. 'Maybe we should leave the dishes and the rice cooker on the floor for now,' my wife said. 'The microwave the TV and the hot water maker too.' Grudgingly, I had to agree it felt safer that way.
Across the street Mrs. Shishido tidied up her yard, picking twigs off the grass and sweeping leaves from the front walk into the gutter. She wore a white mask over her nose and mouth, common in Japan to fend off the germs and allergens of the season. 'Konnichi-wa!' she said, turning from her chores as I walked over. She was never short of words, and I hoped today would be no exception.
'Everything all right?' I asked. 'Yes, we're okay, how is your family?' And for the next ten minutes I stuttered through a conversation like none I'd ever had, in any language.
Mrs. Shishido was surprised the power had already come back on (I'd had no idea what to expect). She also said the water would be back on by Friday, maybe Thursday, and oh by the way we can expect a huge aftershock sometime in the next three days. 'Really?' I said, hoping she was just screwing with me. 'Oh yes,' she answered, a look in her eyes that I would soon be familiar with though I would struggle to understand. In her eyes was a look of resignation, of acceptance of something bad we can not control or predict and so we might as well just get on with the business of daily existence.
As she told me about a place I could get water - someone with a well was allowing people to come fill up their jugs at their outdoor tap - stout and hearty Ms. Ito came shuffling over from next door. 'Strongest earthquake I've ever felt,' she said. 'Strongest by far.' Ms. Ito was eighty-something, and smiled like she had faced the worst the world could give her and had come out on top. With neighbors like this, being home was a tremendously comforting feeling.
'Kevin-san,' Mrs. Shishido said, pointing at my face and then hers. 'You should wear a mask. Protect yourself from the radiation.'
-----------
It was long past dark when I headed out on my bicycle, eight or so plastic bottles of all sizes in my backpack. The people had put a sign at the edge of their driveway: 水. As I filled up two young men got out of their car and walked over, each with a large white bucket. Behind them came an older man carrying nothing. I asked him if he lived there; he didn't, then told us how there was a long line for water at a house fifty meters up the road. There were others too, he explained, offering their well water to anyone who needed it.
With neighbors like this...
On the way home I rode by the supermarket, normally open until 11pm. The hand-written sign on the door said they were selling bottled drinks and certain daily necessities and nothing else, and would be closing early every night for the forseeable future. All up and down the street, the restaurants and convenience stores and shoe and eyeglass and book shops were dark as vacant warehouses. The entrance to the gas station was roped off but there were no signs indicating a fuel shortage.
------------
'Happy Birthday!' My older son beamed as if he'd remembered it himself. My wife gave him a long, tight squeeze. ('Let go!' he squealed, squirming.)
'Sorry, I didn't get you a present,' I said as I dug out the pancake mix. (I want to help!' my son barked.) 'Oh it's no problem.' Which of course was true. Her smile told me, if I didn't already know, that she had everything she wanted right there among the dishes and appliances and face-down-on-the-floor picture frames.
Her 40th birthday would be memorable at the very least.
She'd spend the day playing with our boys and keeping an eye on the news, by now almost entirely devoted to the growing concern about the situation down along the southern Fukushima shore. I sorted our clothes, putting away anything that could pass for clean - then emptied two large plastic drawers of my clothes onto the floor and went out to fetch more substantial stores of water. I began the wonderful, consuming task of responding to the literally hundreds of messages and facebook posts from both before and after I was able to say 'Hi we're okay.' I stared at all the tea cups and glasses and semi-fancy souvenirs arranged safely on the throw rug underneath the kitchen table and decided - without knowing quite why - to pack everything away in boxes, as if we were about to move out.
We celebrated with home-made pizza that night (okay frozen pizza crusts from the supermarket topped with chopped vegetables and tuna from a can, baked in the microwave), and afterward sang Happy Birthday around a sponge roll cake decorated with leftover cookies and slices of a single kiwi fruit. This indeed is the stuff of memories.
Like a kids' movie miracle the water came back on, making the those two big drawers of water in the bathroom seem not so much a waste as a luxury. Still, I'd dump it into the washing machine rather than down the drain. Meanwhile my wife, showered and sporting fresh pajamas for the first time in days, thought her birthday just couldn't get any better.
She'd fall asleep right along with the boys, back home on our own tatami floor and loving it. I, on the other hand, would be up until the wee hours trying to make sense of the stream of conflicting reports on the seriousness of the nuclear reactor situation while texting back and forth with a couple of friends who had already packed their families and some clothes in their cars and begun heading west.
Of all the scenes of all the movies, all the passages in all the books I've ever read, this was the one that came to mind as I stared at the screen of my laptop soon after returning home on Sunday.
The population of the shelter was about half what it had been the first night. In the morning air I felt a mix of restlessness and lethargy; the aftershocks had all but ceased, and though they'd probably keep the gym open for anyone wanting to stay, I knew it was time for us to go home - utilities or no.
First, however, we'd accept three rations of breakfast bread plus a sponge roll cake from the men in the windbreakers still working on all our behalf.
We weren't going to be able to fit all our futons and blankets and kids into the car at once without raising a few Child Welfare & Social Service eyebrows; I'd have to make two trips. The futons, much more relaxed and manageable than my sugared up son, would go first.
At home I found the electricity had come back. Five minutes later, with the old Model T laptop warmed up and my inbox overflowing with the thoughts and prayers and hopes and pleas of countless good people, I turned into Huck Finn in a tree.
--------------
My older son got right back to playing with his cars and trains; he didn't seem to even notice that half the apartment was now scattered all over the floor. Our younger boy, who just a few days ago had taken his first real steps, clung to his mommy as if he knew something bad had happened and might again at any time. My wife flipped the TV on, watching the images of devastation we now knew all too well while listening to vague reports of problems at the nuclear power plants fifty miles to the southeast. I set about putting our apartment and our life (so it felt) back in order. 'Maybe we should leave the dishes and the rice cooker on the floor for now,' my wife said. 'The microwave the TV and the hot water maker too.' Grudgingly, I had to agree it felt safer that way.
Across the street Mrs. Shishido tidied up her yard, picking twigs off the grass and sweeping leaves from the front walk into the gutter. She wore a white mask over her nose and mouth, common in Japan to fend off the germs and allergens of the season. 'Konnichi-wa!' she said, turning from her chores as I walked over. She was never short of words, and I hoped today would be no exception.
'Everything all right?' I asked. 'Yes, we're okay, how is your family?' And for the next ten minutes I stuttered through a conversation like none I'd ever had, in any language.
Mrs. Shishido was surprised the power had already come back on (I'd had no idea what to expect). She also said the water would be back on by Friday, maybe Thursday, and oh by the way we can expect a huge aftershock sometime in the next three days. 'Really?' I said, hoping she was just screwing with me. 'Oh yes,' she answered, a look in her eyes that I would soon be familiar with though I would struggle to understand. In her eyes was a look of resignation, of acceptance of something bad we can not control or predict and so we might as well just get on with the business of daily existence.
As she told me about a place I could get water - someone with a well was allowing people to come fill up their jugs at their outdoor tap - stout and hearty Ms. Ito came shuffling over from next door. 'Strongest earthquake I've ever felt,' she said. 'Strongest by far.' Ms. Ito was eighty-something, and smiled like she had faced the worst the world could give her and had come out on top. With neighbors like this, being home was a tremendously comforting feeling.
'Kevin-san,' Mrs. Shishido said, pointing at my face and then hers. 'You should wear a mask. Protect yourself from the radiation.'
-----------
It was long past dark when I headed out on my bicycle, eight or so plastic bottles of all sizes in my backpack. The people had put a sign at the edge of their driveway: 水. As I filled up two young men got out of their car and walked over, each with a large white bucket. Behind them came an older man carrying nothing. I asked him if he lived there; he didn't, then told us how there was a long line for water at a house fifty meters up the road. There were others too, he explained, offering their well water to anyone who needed it.
With neighbors like this...
On the way home I rode by the supermarket, normally open until 11pm. The hand-written sign on the door said they were selling bottled drinks and certain daily necessities and nothing else, and would be closing early every night for the forseeable future. All up and down the street, the restaurants and convenience stores and shoe and eyeglass and book shops were dark as vacant warehouses. The entrance to the gas station was roped off but there were no signs indicating a fuel shortage.
------------
'Happy Birthday!' My older son beamed as if he'd remembered it himself. My wife gave him a long, tight squeeze. ('Let go!' he squealed, squirming.)
'Sorry, I didn't get you a present,' I said as I dug out the pancake mix. (I want to help!' my son barked.) 'Oh it's no problem.' Which of course was true. Her smile told me, if I didn't already know, that she had everything she wanted right there among the dishes and appliances and face-down-on-the-floor picture frames.
Her 40th birthday would be memorable at the very least.
She'd spend the day playing with our boys and keeping an eye on the news, by now almost entirely devoted to the growing concern about the situation down along the southern Fukushima shore. I sorted our clothes, putting away anything that could pass for clean - then emptied two large plastic drawers of my clothes onto the floor and went out to fetch more substantial stores of water. I began the wonderful, consuming task of responding to the literally hundreds of messages and facebook posts from both before and after I was able to say 'Hi we're okay.' I stared at all the tea cups and glasses and semi-fancy souvenirs arranged safely on the throw rug underneath the kitchen table and decided - without knowing quite why - to pack everything away in boxes, as if we were about to move out.
We celebrated with home-made pizza that night (okay frozen pizza crusts from the supermarket topped with chopped vegetables and tuna from a can, baked in the microwave), and afterward sang Happy Birthday around a sponge roll cake decorated with leftover cookies and slices of a single kiwi fruit. This indeed is the stuff of memories.
Like a kids' movie miracle the water came back on, making the those two big drawers of water in the bathroom seem not so much a waste as a luxury. Still, I'd dump it into the washing machine rather than down the drain. Meanwhile my wife, showered and sporting fresh pajamas for the first time in days, thought her birthday just couldn't get any better.
She'd fall asleep right along with the boys, back home on our own tatami floor and loving it. I, on the other hand, would be up until the wee hours trying to make sense of the stream of conflicting reports on the seriousness of the nuclear reactor situation while texting back and forth with a couple of friends who had already packed their families and some clothes in their cars and begun heading west.
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