Well it’s been ages since the earthquake, so you’re probably done with hearing about it. However I wrote this shortly after it happened and never posted it. So now I will, for posterity’s sake if nothing else.
So let’s start with the earthquake itself. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, preceded by strong foreshocks and succeeded by many, many aftershocks, struck at about a quarter to three on Friday afternoon, in a patch of the sea about 80km from land, and about 380km from Tokyo. This measured in at shindo 7 in Sendai, and shindo mid-5ish in Tokyo (the shindo scale measures the effects in different places. It goes up to 7).
I’d been in Tokyo about a week and this would be the second earthquake. The first I had really failed to notice, sitting, as I was at the time, in a small room talking to someone on a video conference in China.
I was another video conference - this time, in the main part of the office, with headphones in, when this one happened. There was a sense of movement, and then general commotion. Nothing serious at this point. I carried on the video conference.
Then a bit more, and I stopped the call, and people went under desks. Then a big, big shunting feeling. I remember it being like serious turbulence: mostly a rumble, then suddenly the plane moves much further than it should, and you’re overcome by a sort of empty feeling as something normal becomes something scary.
That passed, and then it happened again. Most people were under desks by now. I should mention that my office is floor 26 of a big skyscraper - big high, but also big wide - and importantly, modern. Such buildings are built with all kinds of dampening instruments that disperse the energy into the ground and into swaying and circular motion. Apparently. Right at this point, I could hear the thing move - hear it, an awful creaking sound, while looking out our big window at Tokyo very far down, and getting as far away from the window as possible, as that’s the thing that will break.
Between these two quakes about half the office set off down the stairs (26 stories worth, remember), and I was in the half that stayed. I’m quite glad: I think under a desk, with people shouting ‘whoa!’ and laughing, is better than halfway down stairs, where the shaking could throw you down. The building just shook away merrily, stopped. Some people were scared, most felt... how do i put this... a sort of “blimey” feeling. Among the Japanese, who have been through hundreds of earthquakes, general agreement that this was the strongest.
The aftershocks continued through that day and the following week. Working after the shaking itself was a write-off, but no-one really wanted to leave, and anyway, Chloe and I decided we’d meet in Roppongi anyway. (It took half an hour for me to reach Chloe, who had left her phone in the flat and gone outside. That was the worst part of the whole thing). I went to look at the city from the other side of the building - on my side, it all looked perfectly normal, except for the number of people on the streets - and saw Chiba oil refinery explode.
One thing I did want to point out was that all through this the best reports were coming not from the western press, who did in all a terrible job of covering the story (obfuscating Tokyo and Northern Honshu, looking for catastrophe and not providing useful info) but through Japanese news and in particular, for us, a dedicated group of bilingual Tokyoites on Twitter. I never would have thought Time Out Tokyo would be so useful, but they did an incredibly good job, working long hours and keeping people informed.
That was then. Since then we’ve been back to England, and I’ve been to New York and California for work. Now back in Tokyo, time to put this episode to bed and get on with settling in here.
Tom
So let’s start with the earthquake itself. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, preceded by strong foreshocks and succeeded by many, many aftershocks, struck at about a quarter to three on Friday afternoon, in a patch of the sea about 80km from land, and about 380km from Tokyo. This measured in at shindo 7 in Sendai, and shindo mid-5ish in Tokyo (the shindo scale measures the effects in different places. It goes up to 7).
I’d been in Tokyo about a week and this would be the second earthquake. The first I had really failed to notice, sitting, as I was at the time, in a small room talking to someone on a video conference in China.
I was another video conference - this time, in the main part of the office, with headphones in, when this one happened. There was a sense of movement, and then general commotion. Nothing serious at this point. I carried on the video conference.
Then a bit more, and I stopped the call, and people went under desks. Then a big, big shunting feeling. I remember it being like serious turbulence: mostly a rumble, then suddenly the plane moves much further than it should, and you’re overcome by a sort of empty feeling as something normal becomes something scary.
That passed, and then it happened again. Most people were under desks by now. I should mention that my office is floor 26 of a big skyscraper - big high, but also big wide - and importantly, modern. Such buildings are built with all kinds of dampening instruments that disperse the energy into the ground and into swaying and circular motion. Apparently. Right at this point, I could hear the thing move - hear it, an awful creaking sound, while looking out our big window at Tokyo very far down, and getting as far away from the window as possible, as that’s the thing that will break.
Between these two quakes about half the office set off down the stairs (26 stories worth, remember), and I was in the half that stayed. I’m quite glad: I think under a desk, with people shouting ‘whoa!’ and laughing, is better than halfway down stairs, where the shaking could throw you down. The building just shook away merrily, stopped. Some people were scared, most felt... how do i put this... a sort of “blimey” feeling. Among the Japanese, who have been through hundreds of earthquakes, general agreement that this was the strongest.
The aftershocks continued through that day and the following week. Working after the shaking itself was a write-off, but no-one really wanted to leave, and anyway, Chloe and I decided we’d meet in Roppongi anyway. (It took half an hour for me to reach Chloe, who had left her phone in the flat and gone outside. That was the worst part of the whole thing). I went to look at the city from the other side of the building - on my side, it all looked perfectly normal, except for the number of people on the streets - and saw Chiba oil refinery explode.
One thing I did want to point out was that all through this the best reports were coming not from the western press, who did in all a terrible job of covering the story (obfuscating Tokyo and Northern Honshu, looking for catastrophe and not providing useful info) but through Japanese news and in particular, for us, a dedicated group of bilingual Tokyoites on Twitter. I never would have thought Time Out Tokyo would be so useful, but they did an incredibly good job, working long hours and keeping people informed.
That was then. Since then we’ve been back to England, and I’ve been to New York and California for work. Now back in Tokyo, time to put this episode to bed and get on with settling in here.
Tom
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