Moving on

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I’m on the Skyliner, the express train between Ueno Station in Tokyo and Narita airport. Mika was an angel yesterday and found out for me which trains were running as they are not running a full timetable yet after the earthquake. The train isn’t very full at all – normally there are lots of foreigners on it. I look out the window and see pink cherry blossom everywhere like candy floss floating on the solid burnt black branches. I’m looking at the Daily Yomiuri, the only English newspaper I could find at Nippori Station, to find out more about the earthquake on Thursday. It says it was strongest in Miyagi Prefecture. I look out my Lonely Planet book and check the kanji, and realise that I’d mistaken the kanji for Miyagi for Fukushima. Miyagi is the prefecture to the north of Fukushima and was the hardest hit by last month’s earthquake. Most of the horrifying images on British TV of the tsunami came from Miyagi.

I’m waiting at Arrivals when Neil phones me. The plane from Marseille was late at Frankfurt so his bag hasn’t made the connection. We go to the shops and restaurants area to have a coffee. Normally this area of Narita airport is brimming with westerners looking for souvenirs to take back home, but now there are scarcely any. All the shops selling traditional Japanese wares are empty. Neil tells me his flight from Frankfurt was less than half full. They had to land in Seoul where the German crew (or at least the cabin staff) was replaced by a Japanese crew. The German crews overnight in Seoul rather than Tokyo, a practice they started soon after the earthquake which according to the German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, was to avoid any radiation. I check the chart in the Japan Times I’d just bought at the airport. The latest figure for Tokyo is 0.088 microsieverts per hour, whereas the average in the UK is 0.25 microsieverts per hour.

Neil’s phone rings. They will bring his bag with the next ANA flight to Tokyo and will deliver it to our hotel in Nikko tomorrow. A member of staff will bring him 5000 yen for his immediate needs. Waiting outside the coffee shop, we spot a uniformed young woman running over to us, with small steps. As she comes towards us, I smile as I remember that Japanese staff will always run with small steps while they perform jobs for you, whether it’s checking the price of something, finding a boxed version of the goods on display or whatever. It shows that they are attentive staff whereas in Europe no member of staff would ever run to get you something. When she arrives, she hands Neil an envelope with the 5000 yen in it, with several ‘sumimasen’s’ and bows. In Europe you’d be told to buy items up to that amount and to send off all the receipts for a refund, which is far more hassle for the client.

After we’ve done all the paperwork at the desk with the rental car company, the young woman accompanies us out to show us to the car. It has an integrated sat nav (car navigation system). We are going to Nikko, set among the mountains with World Heritage shrines and temples. Neil’s road atlas, which has both Roman script and Japanese names, is in his case somewhere over Russia in the ANA plane. The only road atlas we could find in the airport has just English, which isn’t much use for navigating as you can’t recognise the place names unless the signs also have Roman script, which they often do, but not always. I have the phone number for our hotel, so the young woman goes through the Japanese menu on the sat nav and keys it in. You can key in any landline number into a Japanese sat nav and it will lead you to that address.

We pass through the town of Narita and on northwards, further in the direction of the epicentre of last month’s earthquake. We start noticing lots of blue tarpaulin covering sections of roofs. Very often it’s covering the roof ridge, and in every case it’s held down by bags of something heavy looking. Not every house is affected but a sizeable proportion are. I remember that several of my friends in the Mito area said how their roofs had been damaged. Although it’s just starting to rain, this time of year is comparatively dry in Japan which is very fortunate. With so much damage, it must be very hard getting hold of a builder.

We start heading westwards, and as suddenly as the blue tarpaulin area started, it now stops and we don’t see any roofs covered in blue. Unless you are here, it’s hard to appreciate just how much difference it makes exactly where you are relative to the epicentre of the earthquake. That’s why the Japanese system always rates the shaking in a particular area.

We’re coming closer to Nikko now. Pools of clouds gather in the valleys between spines of thickly forested mountains. The peaks are free of the clouds and it looks like those watery Chinese paintings. Suddenly a line of pylons march across the foreground. By the time we reach Nikko itself, it’s lost in Scotch mist.

We’d booked to stay at Kanaya Hotel, the oldest western style hotel in Japan and registered as National Heritage of Japan. I had e-mailed the hotel to check that it was still open after the earthquake. We park our car opposite the entrance and two young female staff come out to help us unload. They carry our bags for us – the forecourt is gravel so you can’t wheel your cases. I’ve often noticed in Japan how female staff will carry bags whereas everywhere else I know, this is a male preserve.

In the hotel lobby we are surrounded by staff without another guest to be seen. When I leave the hotel later to explore the surroundings, there are four members of staff, all of whom bow as I go through the door. I had seen a Japanese couple checking in earlier, and later in the evening we see the small hotel bus arrive with guests, but we have the impression that the hotel isn’t very full at all. With the foreigners all staying away and many Japanese practising ‘jishuku’, it must be a real struggle for countless people dependent on the hospitality field to make their living. As I picked up some leaflets from the Tourist Information at Narita Airport earlier this morning, and commented that they must be a bit quiet at the moment, the woman at the desk gave a sad laugh, and said, ‘Thank you very much for coming in these times’.

In the Japan Times there is an article about Thursday’s earthquake:

‘While strong aftershocks have continues since the March 11 mega-quake, Thursday’s was the first to register in the upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale. Matsuko Ito, who since the tsunami has been living in a shelter in the city of Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, said she felt terrified when she was woken by the building shaking. ‘I was scared almost as much as last time’, said the 64-year-old, adding she started screaming when the quake struck. ‘It’s enough. Something has changed. The world feels strange now. Even the way the clouds move isn’t right.’

I check the Asahi website for their chart on earthquakes. There has been another large one in Miyagi today, not as big as Thursday’s, but still as a lower 5, enough to give no peace. When will the earth stop moving?

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