Pink ice-cream

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As far as I can make out, there were no vibrations or shakings in the night. My phone rings. It’s Hanako-san to make arrangements for meeting on Monday. I should take the train to Katsuta, and she and Kimura-san will pick me up then by car. We’ll go to Hitachi Seaside Park. If it rains, we’ll go somewhere else in Oarai. If there is an earthquake and the trains are cancelled, then we’ll phone. I smile to myself. Times have really changed when you don’t only have to allow for rain in making plans but also for earthquakes.

I go out the hotel entrance and past all the construction workers relaying the pavement slabs which must have been tossed around by the earthquake. I spot Michiko-san’s yellow car waiting for me in the street. ‘Ohisashiburi desu ne’, we say amidst all the laughs. Michiko-san opens the door for me to sit in the back with Hashimoto-san.

We’re off to Kasama, my favourite destination. It’s a pottery town and I know of nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It’s full of small individual shops selling an enormous variety of pottery made with so much originality and skill. I normally go to Kasama whenever I come to Japan and end up buying far too much pottery for my weight allowance.

Michiko-san is taking us a back route I don’t know. As we’re chatting away we each in turn let out cries of ‘oh, look at that’. Sometimes it’s the wonder of pink cherry blossom trees in full bloom which has caught our attention, other times it’s blue plastic tarpaulin on damaged roofs. They teach me a new Japanese word, ‘gushi’, ridge tile. Everywhere we look we see the ridges on houses covered with blue plastic tarpaulin. As always, it seems to be the older roofs which are affected.

We call in one of my favourite pottery shops, Kilala-kan. They have a café area here where you can choose a matching coffee cup and saucer off some shelves. Each coffee cup and saucer set is handmade and different. The coffee and tea is free. We sit at the table with our drinks and notice a note on cardboard. Hashimoto-san reads it for me, ‘Please write a note to cheer us up, from your staff’. Someone has written a note on the cardboard in Japanese. Hashimoto-san and Michiko-san translate it for me, ‘Keep smiling, nikoniko’. We each in turn add our notes to encourage the staff. A young shop assistant comes and I do my best to translate my message into Japanese. She smiles.

I’m at the counter, having chosen four different pieces of pottery for presents back in Europe, including a small cup with a golden chick on it of a design which is used by Princess Ayako, the Crown Prince’s daughter. There is a photo next to the display showing the Imperial family with this pottery. The small cup is for my granddaughter. After the shop assistant has carefully wrapped up individually each piece of pottery, I ask her if she could wrap some bubble wrap round it as I’ll be taking it with me when I fly to Europe. I watch fascinated as she wraps bubble wrap round it as if it were origami. Each piece of bubble wrap is cut to size, then the item is placed on it, and the bubble wrap is wound round it at a diagonal angle, selotaped at intervals, ending up as a very neat package. I think to myself, it will be good in earthquakes too.

We’re having lunch in a soba restaurant in Kasama. I notice a chef making soba (buckwheat noodles) in a corner of the small restaurant. I go over to watch, fascinated. He’s rolling out a dough which must be one and a half metres wide by one metre deep. He folds it over several times, and then using a board, cuts against it with a big knife to make long strips like spaghetti. He throws it into an enormous pot of boiling water.

Over lunch I’m asking them what it was like after the big earthquake. We’re talking about the aftershocks on the first day. Hashimoto-san writes down in my notepad that on the first day between 7-10 pm, there were about 30 aftershocks. I’m trying to imagine what on earth it would feel like to have 30 aftershocks in such a short space of time. Some of them were massive aftershocks and so each time one started you wouldn’t know how big it was going to be. A friend of Hashimoto-san spent the first night in a car as her house was covered inside by damaged pottery and glassware. You couldn’t use a vacuum cleaner to help tidy up as there was no electricity.

Michiko-san is telling Hashimoto-san about my younger brother. I’d sent Michiko-san several e-mails about it, explaining that my younger brother was a deputy head and that his school in Glasgow had raised about £2,000 for the Save the Children Fund Japanese Relief Effort. Michiko-san had sent me a lovely e-mail about it, thanking my brother, the school children and all their parents. Sakamoto-san had also sent me an e-mail expressing her thanks to my brother and the schoolchildren as had Tanaka-san at the MESA meeting. Hashimoto-san, after she’s heard all about it from Michiko-san, gave a deep bow and said to me ‘arigato gozaimashita’ – thank you so much. I find that Japanese people are deeply and genuinely touched to hear of such stories about others trying to help them.

We’re walking around Inari Jinja shrine in Kasama. Our attention is drawn by a beautiful weeping sakura tree, with trails of frothy pink. In an area of the shrine where there are lanterns and stone fox figures, much of it is damaged and lying on the ground. We walk from there down the row of shops marking the entrance to the shrine. It’s all so quiet – we’re almost the only people here. It must be very hard for them to make a living at the moment.

We climb the steep flight of steps up to the Kasama Craft Hills. We look at the gigantic kiln. The roof is still intact but the huge kiln has collapsed and there are piles of bricks from it neatly piled up. Inside the shop area the shelves are still full of pottery. Further on is the area with much more expensive pottery. There doesn’t seem to be as much of the really expensive pottery and the shelves where the most precious pottery used to be seem to be bare. When I pay for the pots I’ve chosen, and wonder if I was very wise buying so much when I need to transport it back to Europe, I ask the assistant about the damage from the earthquake. She tells me a lot was damaged.

In the tea room we enjoy licking at our soft strawberry ice-cream balanced in the cones, like schoolchildren. The aftershock on Monday which Neil and I had experienced waiting at the traffic lights was the largest since the earthquake, and it was a Shindo 5. The earthquake was a Shindo 6. They’d never experienced a Shindo 5 before this time. They’d never known anything like it. Michiko-san would like to go somewhere else for a break, but her husband is happy here. The normal aftershocks of 3 and 4, they’re OK, but a 5 – kowakatta desu – I was scared. And the big earthquake, a 6, was much worse. Many people are depressed. Their faces look tired, like so many faces I’ve seen recently, but as we chat and the laughs break through, and we lick at our strawberry ice-cream, their expressions lighten.

On the way day to the car we are all mesmerised by the sakura. It is so incredibly light and perfect – more perfect than I’ve ever seen it before. It’s so beautiful, kirei desu ne, say Michiko-san and Hashimoto-san.

Neil and I go up to the top two floor of Labi, the electronic department store, which Neil found to be so empty earlier in the week. I guess everyone is having either to save money for their broken roofs, or thinking they might need it in case of damage after the next aftershock. We’re looking for a restaurant to eat. We try one, but it’s booked out. We walk past several more. The restaurants seem full and there are lots of loud excited voices. It seems that there’s plenty of beer and alcohol being drunk. It’s as if people are letting off steam for the first time.

When I asked Michiko and Hashimoto-san how long the aftershocks would last, they said the experts said one year. Although Fukushima is gradually coming under control, as the Foreign Office says, it will still be of concern for some time. With so many uncertainties, people need to eat soft pink strawberry ice-cream or to drink beer, or life is just too stressful.

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