A few days ago, Japan was struck with earthquakes which had magnitudes of up to 8.9. The worst of it was in Sendai and Miyagi Prefectures, a little north of Tokyo. These places were wrecked. It was bad enough that the quake happened. Japan expects these to happen quite often. What really destroyed things were the numerous tsunamis that crushed cities in minutes. I have nearly cried every day since it happened while watching the destruction. It's really hard to understand what it's like. Just watching the TV, I felt like I was watching a movie like The Day After Tomorrow or 2012 or something.
The death tolls rose steadily as the night went on. When I got out of work, it was about 20, a few hours later, about 100, and when I finally went to sleep, it had gotten up to 300 people dead. Now, I think they've estimated somewhere in the 1,000s. There are also many people missing. I can't help but think anyone missing is dead. I watched entire houses and massive structures float in the mess and shred to small pieces of lumber. I watched fires rage like a damn volcano for hours and hours. I saw sludge and debris pick up cars and farms like they were specks of dirt. I imagine anyone stuck in the tsunami's path was like an ant in the flow of a river. There were little kei cars trying to out-drive the water as it came toward them. At their fastest, kei cars are about 80-100km per hour, so the water must have been moving about the same speed or higher. There were giant ships being tossed around like leaves and ending up in a whirlpool of ocean that looked like outer space. TERRIFYING!
Many of the survivors of both the New Zealand quakes and Japanese quakes and tsunamis had to bear the next night or two in about -1 degrees Celsius without water or electricity. That must have been the worst night of anyone's life.
I live on the island of Shikoku. We are the 4th largest island in Japan and pretty far southwest. The giant 10 meter tsunamis were up toward Hokkaido. All day, we were expected to have our own tsunamis. It began with 1 meter high ones, in the "yellow" or "pretty safe" area. About an hour later, we were in the "red" or "dangerous, be careful" zone, expecting tsunamis of about 2 meters to hit our beaches. By the evening, we were in the "white and red" or the most extreme tsunami category on the news with 3 meters or higher tsunamis coming our way. Please keep in mind that a tsunami of about 50 centimeters can wash a human or even a car away. Luckily, Yasuda-cho is pretty high up. I live at the tsunami evacuation point, so everyone just kept telling me to go home and stay home.
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| Yasuda's Shoreline the day the tsunamis hit. Supposedly 2 meters. |
I find it really hard to think about this whole thing. I can't help but tear up when I watch videos of the events. The news just keeps showing the tsunamis absolutely destroying towns that look a whole lot like Kochi. Also, when I think about how they were not ready for it, it just breaks my heart. I could have ended up there, myself, if JET had chosen to stick me there! I would have nothing left, maybe even be dead. Really hard to think about that. Needless to say, I got panicky phone calls from both my Nana and my mother. My Facebook page was loaded with people that were showing their concern, even people I didn't talk to. Death really frightens me and it took a lot to not think about death the past few days.
That all being said, it's strange to think that I "survived" Japan's most devastating earthquake in history. I've been trying to keep my mind preoccupied to stop feeling sad about it. Pineapple Express was a lot better than I thought it would be. . .
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