Last friday

Last Friday I was swimming in the pool of the ICU gym just to get some exercise. I was pushing myself and I felt with some satisfaction that I was getting somewhat woozy as I stood on one side of the pool to rest up a bit. As soon as I got woozy the wind picked up and started to rattle the windows pretty hard, a fraction of a second later things inside started to fall down and that was when I realized that I was not getting woozy and that there was no wind but that there was a major earthquake, one nothing comparable to the ones I had experienced so far. I was swimming with two other guys and by chance we were all at the same side of the pool hanging on the side and listening and watching very carefully at the building and the noises it makes. The water in the pool started to get wild and waves started forming and splashing over the side of the pool against the walls and in the other pool. I was in the corner and had decided to put one hand on each corner to hold on just in case. I was not panicking just extremely concentrated. My threshold for panic was reached a few times though, when the earthquake got more intense and the noises of the building and the shakes of the earth came in a faster succession and were therefore more overpowering but it never went over the border to full panic mode where the single thought of being outside rules your entire being. But I felt safe in the water and in the simple and low construction of the pool building. To my right I could see one guy with a look of awe and suspense on his face and the other with a look of genuine terror; I believe my face resembled more the one of the first guy. Minutes after the earthquake the body of water still did not come to a rest and it was still moving after I had found my goggles and we could leave the pool. While changing there was a pretty big and long aftershock which scared me, “another one?”, but it was just an aftershock and it did not get more intense.

In Canada House, my dormitory, people were gathering and exchanging stories about their experience and there was a overall positive mood and a sense of silliness about one’s own terror. This was before we knew about the tsunami and the problems with the nuclear facilities in Fukushima which has made this earthquake and ensuing tsunami one of the greatest disasters to ever have hit Japan. Over the weekend it mostly has been following the news and not going outside much, everything in Tokyo was cancelled, but restaurants and shops were still open so we ate out in the neighborhood a couple of times. Power cuts were planned for one part of Tokyo at a time which also made it more difficult to go by train since these did not work sometimes and this in turn made that most offices were not open. Luckily though the complex of the ICU was build for a military purpose and has therefore its own water and electricity supply so we did not have any power cuts. There was one particularly big after shake (I am actually not sure of these are considered after shakes or earthquakes in their own right) that almost made me run out in my boxer short with the jeans that I hastily picked off the floor in my hand and the sound of a lot of naked feet running over the tiles in my ear at 5 in the morning. But a Japanese housemate that was just walking down the hallway said it was nothing to worry about so I turned around and went back to bed, and it did turn out to be nothing to worry about. By Tuesday however, the shops were running out of supply for certain goods and the problems with the nuclear plant were, and are, still not under control; it suffered 3 explosions and a fire so far. Together with an ever growing concern of my family and friends for my safety made it wise for me to relocate to Hiroshima (about 1000km. from Fukushima) where I am now writing this.

I am not sure what to make of me running from a potential nuclear disaster to the historic site of another one but at least here I will learn a lot about the power of the nuclear. Since a lot of people are cancelling their trips to Japan I was able to get a good hotel for a bargain price and from here I can see the ‘Peace memorial Park’ and right on the other side of the river is the ‘A-Bomb Dome’, both are there to remind us of that fatal morning of 6 august 1945. The bomb exploded almost vertically above the ‘A-Bomb Dome’ which made that it was somewhat protected from the flattening power of the blast and it is still standing today as a big skeleton and a grim reminder of the potential destructiveness of nuclear power. My thoughts go out to the men and women working right now in Fukushima to prevent such a disaster from happening today.

Some items running out



Improving the isolation of the house



Atomic Bomb Dome