Friendship

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Neil’s getting up to go to Tsukuba for a meeting and I’m still in bed, thinking I should be getting up. I feel the vibrations, and this time they increase, rather than easing off. As I lie there I can feel the building start to sway and as it sways it creaks, backwards and forwards it goes. Should I be jumping out of bed? The swaying and the creaking die down and then fade away.

I’m going for a run round Senba Lake, the only reminder of the earthquake is dodging the broken bits of tarmac. It’s a perfect blue sky and the cherry blossom trees which encircle the lake are still in full bloom. There are people out walking round the lake, most of them exercising in a serious way, often wearing white gloves which is part of the kit. Many of them are wearing hats, as at the first sunbeam Japanese people, and in particular women, tend to don a hat. Here the world seems just as it always has been and the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima seem miles away, although all the conversations of the last few days keep coming into my head.

I check the Asahi website. This morning’s aftershock was centred in Ibaraki – this prefecture – and was a Shindo 4. Funny how checking the website for earthquakes has become part of the routine of the day. Many of my friends have told me they have the TV running to find out the latest news about earthquakes, as after there has been one, the details of it appear on the screen.

I’m sitting in a café in Mito waiting for my lunch to come. I’m the only customer there. The vibrations start. The waiter is standing in the counter area and our eyes meet. The lights start swinging and the empty wines bottles which are in little alcoves as decorations start rattling. We watch one another, the lights and the wine bottles to see if the aftershock will increase. ‘Kowai desu ka?’ the waiter asks me – are you scared? I give a shrug and a grin in what I hope is an encouraging fashion. The vibrations die down, and gradually the lights stop their dance.

You’re already waiting for me when I get to the ticket barrier at Mito Station. I’m so glad to see you. You’re my oldest friend in Japan, right from my very first trip here in 1993. We’ve met every time I’ve come here. We emerge from Mito Station and you see the sakura lining the Sakura River. Let’s go for a walk, you say. We talk in a mixture of Japanese and English, as we always have done. You tell me where you were at the time of the earthquake, that your house was so damaged you had to spend the first 3 days in a shelter. There was no electricity until the 14th and no water until the 19th. But a neighbour has a well and you could get some water from there. You couldn’t have a bath until the water supply was repaired after 8 days.

We reach a seating area under a trellis on the edge of Senba Lake. The roof of your house is badly damaged – it’s an old house – and you show me the photos of the inside damage of your house – tiles cracked, walls cracked, the garden wall collapsed. It will cost ¥4,500,000 to repair it. I work out that that’s about £33,000. Your insurance won’t cover it so you’ll have to pay it yourselves – so sadly no trips away or anything. I ask about your children and you ask about ours.

We’re in the Hotel Terrace restaurant having coffee. You tell me about all the aftershocks. You can’t sleep properly at night and keep waking up. There’s Fukushima too – maybe it will get worse. Maybe there will be another big earthquake and tsunami and they won’t be able to cool it. Your husband is working very long hours at work, and doing shifts. For the first few days you didn’t feel you could do anything, it was all such a shock. Your mother-in-law lives in Hokkaido and has invited you there, but you don’t feel you can leave here. If you went, there might be another big earthquake and your husband might be killed, and then you’d be on your own.

My eyes water. I ask you for a piece of paper. I write on it in English, ‘Post traumatic stress’. I tell you that someone in my family has been suffering from this and has been getting therapy. I say how I can understand how terrible it must be with all the aftershocks and all the uncertainties. I feel helpless.

At the station ticket barrier we say goodbye. You do a deep Japanese bow. I go towards you and – knowing it’s not at all Japanese particularly in a public place like a station – I give you a hug. ‘Gambarou’, I say.

There’s an article about aftershocks in today’s Japan Times. It shows a map of the 6 earthquakes and aftershocks in east Japan over magnitude 7:

11th March 14.46 M9.0
11th March 15.08 M7.4
11th March 15.15 M7.7
11th March 15.25 M7.5
7th April 23.32 M7.1
11th April 17.16 M7.0

As of 5 pm Tuesday this week, there have been 408 aftershocks with a magnitude of 5.0 and above, 68 registering 6.0 and higher and five at the 7.0 level or higher, according to the Meteorological Agency, which does not count aftershocks smaller than those with a magnitude of 5.0. On average, there are about 10 quakes a year with magnitude of 7.0 or higher, and there have already been six in the past month. The number of aftershocks following the 11th March quake have been by far the the most recorded in Japan. The Meteorological Agency warned that many more large ones may be in store for eastern Japan. According to the spokesman, ‘The Great East Japan Earthquake was so huge we cannot make reasonable predictions from past quakes'. Some experts say they could last at least a year.

I am well aware that next Tuesday I fly back to Europe where the ground does not turn into an angry beast, where you can sleep at night without wondering whether the swaying is in your dreams or is reality. And no-one can say when the aftershocks will die down, when the earth will come to rest. And my Japanese friends will have to carry on living where the only certainty is that no-one knows.

But I also have huge faith in their strength and courage.

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