It's very difficult to know what to write, or to feel. I and all the people I know here are alive and well, and so many are not. For us, we have only started to realise since getting electricity and internet access back what kind of scale this thing has been of, the sheer gargantuan awfulness of it; we are behind the people at home in that respect. So I will just write what I experienced myself.
At quarter to 3 last Friday, my last scheduled day of the school year, I was sitting at my desk in Kuji East High School's staffroom, worrying over the Japanese practice paper I was doing and what to say at the double-date a friend had lined up for us that evening.
For the first 10 seconds or so - a low rumble, the tinkle of items resting on the window glass - I wondered whether to start worrying, then as the shaking and noise increased started to worry. A minute later, when we were standing outside in the corridor clutching doorframes and the force had only increased, I was getting scared. Another minute later, when the electricity had cut out and the damned thing still hadn't stopped, I felt as grown-up as a babe in arms. I think I wanted my mother.
Finally and apparently with much reluctance, the shaking subsided. As there wasn't much I could do at the school (the building, besides, was undamaged and the few students at school all accounted for and safe), my JTE suggested I find somewhere to stay for the night. My own home is a little distance from the school and it seemed likely that roads would be cut off. Immediately I knew our friend Kenji - guardian angel of ALTs in Kuji - would put me up, and so walked across town to his office. Driving seemed as if it would be rather hairy as all traffic lights had lost power, plus there were a few insane drivers on the road apparently intent on causing pile-ups. En route I saw the Kuji river, normally a picture of sleepy docility, 4 times its normal height and speed, and reversed in direction, carrying debris inland just under the bridge I was walking on. The talk of tsunamis that the teachers had been carrying on earlier started to make more sense.
Kenji was as good as I had hoped. Power, phones and water had all been out for hours. After meeting members of his extended family round the candles, I ended up sleeping with Kenji on the floor of the second floor of his office (in case of another tsunami during the night). At this point, via battery-powered radio, we were starting to get the first inkling of what had been happening around the country. Massive scale, hundreds (at that point) of deaths. At this point though this still didn't really register, perhaps due to only being aural and in a foreign language.
A cold night punctuated by regular and strong aftershocks was succeeded by an uncertain morning. Going back to get my car, I came into school to see haggard teachers who had stayed there overnight with a few students whose families could not come to fetch them and who of course could not be contacted. A sign, the first of many, of the Japanese toughness in these situations - all teachers who could had come to school to help out, all with an air of cheerful capability (especially impressive considering many didn't know what condition their own families were in).
After that, the day was a peculiar one. Thanks to the brilliant ingenuity of an employee of Kenji's who managed to connect a computer and router to his car battery (internet access was inexplicably but blessedly available for a short while) I was able to email my parents and post on Facebook. One by one all other ALTs in Kuji were confirmed as safe, with the exception of Georgia, a Kiwi ALT in Noda, a coastal village near Kuji and next to my own. We had already heard that it had been badly hit and as the day continued the news only got worse. Utter destruction, survivors rescued by army helicopter from the roof of the village bank, bodies pulled from wrecked houses. Her boyfriend had trekked into Noda that morning to try to find her, we knew. Now both were missing. After what seemed like aeons they arrived at Kenji's office and we knew all of our closest friends here were safe. She's been on New Zealand national news since, I believe. All of us congregated at the office and proceeded to have a kind of slumber party on Kenji's office floor, complete with guitar singalong (yesterday was supposed to have been a farewell concert for a Kuji teacher, unsurprisingly cancelled).
Yesterday, returning home and finally with electricity, TV and full internet access restored, I started to realise why everyone at home had been so worried and why we had all received so many emails asking if we were safe (when phone reception came back we all had 50+ emails arrive at once). What to us had basically seemed a local disaster suddenly was revealed as national, even international in scope.
So, now, to the uncertainty mentioned above - at one and the same time, I am: (a) glad I'm alive, (b) guilty that I haven't suffered more, (c) shocked at the horrible pictures on the news, (d) pettily frustrated that life hasn't returned completely to normal and that the weekend's events can't be filed away under 'Holiday Adventures', (e) jumpy at anything that sounds like an aftershock and scared at any actual aftershock (we have a 70% chance of getting a magnitude 7 one in the next 2 days apparently), (f) bizarrely thrilled at being close to the centre of world news for the first and probably only time in my life, (g) touched at how many people care about me when it really, actually, comes down to it.
Situation now is that I have power, phone and internet access but no running water. In another example of Japanese organisation though, I can get free water from stations they have put up around town. Gasoline can't be got for love or money, so I'm effectively marooned in my village, but to put my problems in perspective, the death count in Noda is now at 16 and over 800 people are sheltering in the gym of one of my schools having lost almost everything. That is only one of several hundred such shelters around the country.
Of all the things it's hard to get one's head around, I've always thought luck is one of the hardest - if I lived a couple of miles nearer the coast and the tsunami had come at night, I would most likely be dead - but I don't, it didn't and I'm not. My situation is not theirs, theirs is not mine. Those are the facts, and to ascribe any kind of metanarrative, the grace of God, to that seems odd in some ways. On the other hand, what a tiny fraction it was that separated me from oblivion, and I'm not arrogant enough to take that for granted. So, all I can say is that I'm still here, and I'm really, really bloody happy that's the case.
My heart goes out to the hundreds of thousands of people around this country who are in the depths of despair right now. But this is a strong people, and it is never stronger than when experiencing adversity. I have not seen a single case of looting, fighting, argument, even a raised voice, since the earthquake. Everyone, in their Japanese, genki way, has been getting on with the business of helping their fellows with as little fuss as possible. They will come again. It is utterly admirable.