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Published: April 11th 2011
I’m in that cosy warm dream of a state between sleeping and waking, when I become aware of some vibrations. The shoji (paper screen windows) start rattling in their wooden frames and the whole building starts creaking. It must be an aftershock. You can always feel an earthquake more when you’re lying down. I think of what Lian and Mika said about going into the bathroom during the big earthquake, as the smallest room is the strongest. There are so many earthquakes in Japan that you can’t go into shelter every time, and I lie and wait to see if the earthquake will increase or die down. It dies down, and the rattling and the creaking subside. I look at the clock – it’s 6.45 am.
The waitress leads us to our table. It’s the only one which is set. It’s as I wondered – we’re the only two guests in the hotel. I would have thought this was normally a busy time for them with so many foreign tourists visiting Nikko on their trip to Japan in the cherry blossom season. The waitress pours us some water from a silver jug. I notice the hotel emblem engraved on it. She brings us the butter on a silver dish. When the toast comes, it’s not the thick door stop slices you normally get in Japan, but more the size of the ‘thick’ kind in Britain.
The hotel shop is full of elegant souvenirs to buy. There is some writing paper displayed, with sakura (cherry blossom) paper in the centre. I’m not sure who will buy it this season as there are scarcely any guests. I choose a book on the hotel full of old photographs. The captions show the dates in the traditional way with the name of the Emperor and then the year of his reign. You still come across this method and you can find it on some food items. It can make working out the 'best before date' a bit of a challenge.
As I leave the shop I notice three guests arriving, two women and a child. One of the women and the child are wearing face masks. Many Japanese people wear masks at this time of year because of the cedar pollen. In the large cities they also wear masks to protect themselves against the fumes and dust. All the foreign journalists assumed that everyone was wearing them to protect themselves against the radiation.
We are at reception checking out. I count the members of staff here, two behind the desk and five standing around, their hands neatly clasped together. We’re the only guests around. Two young women – the women staff are almost all young as older ones if they marry and have children stay at home – carry our heavy bags to our car. We ask them if they can help us input the telephone number for our hotel in Mito into the sat nav, as we can’t understand the Japanese menu. Three different members of staff attempt this and the third one succeeds. As we leave, I think what a wonderful memorable hotel the Kanaya is.
As we drive eastwards towards Mito we re-enter the area with the blue tarpaulins covering some of the roofs. We look more closely and it seems that it’s usually older style roofs which are covered by blue tarpaulin, the newer roofs seem to be largely intact. We enter the outskirts of Mito. It feels like we’re coming to visit an old dear friend who’s been injured. Most of the buildings seem totally intact but some have sections of their roof covered by blue tarpaulin.
After checking in the Daiwa Roynet Hotel, we go out to see how Mito is faring. Some of the walkways around the south entrance of the station are blocked off as there has been damage. Walking through the passageway through the station we notice that most of the shops are open but some have shutters down – normally they are all open. We come into the plaza area to the north of the station. Some of the overhead walkways are open and some are blocked off because of damage. Down at street level there are cones round areas where the pavement has subsided. I don’t know how much repair work has gone on since the 11th March earthquake – exactly one month ago – nor what the internal damage is like, but it doesn’t look so very different from how it always looked. We pass by Excel, the department store, which is open. We look at the notice on the door and see that it has opened today for the first time, and that the restaurant floor will open on 15th April. We know from friends in the Mito area that the earthquake was so violent here that many items were thrown to the floor and smashed.
We walk along the Sakura River and on to Senba Lake. Our path is lined with exquisite sakura in full bloom. Nature can be cruel and devastating but also breathtaking in her beauty. There are people walking and jogging round the lake, but we only see one group on blue plastic sheeting the entire way, celebrating ‘ohanami’. Our walk takes us over several bridges and we can see how there are differences in height as sections have dropped, sometimes considerably, with the earthquake. There has been a lot of patching with tarmac to cover over the height differences. We walk up to Kairakuen, the famous garden in Mito. It would normally be open at this time but now it’s permanently closed and there are photos of the park on the gate, showing damaged paths. The shop and restaurant at the entrance are closed, and the roof is damaged in many places. We walk on to the shrine. Huge heavy lanterns are strewn on the ground, toppled by the earthquake. As we carry on our walk, it seems that none of the trees has been hurled to the ground.
We want to check out an okonomiyaki restaurant near to our hotel. We’re waiting at the traffic lights, watching the red lights for the pedestrians count down strip by strip. The earth under my feet starts moving. I look at Neil. It’s an earthquake, isn’t it? I can feel the earth moving under me. I look up – the trees in the avenue in the street start swaying. It looks as if the whole trunks are swinging – not just the tops of the trees which happens in a gale. I look at the cars in the street, they’re coming to a halt as the earth carries on moving. I look up, and the buildings and tower blocks in the street are all swinging, huge arcs in the sky above. The red strips for the pedestrian crossing are still counting down. We’re in the right place for an earthquake as you are supposed to evacuate in a large one, but the buildings and tower blocks keep swaying above our heads. If something should fall off? There isn’t anywhere else you can go. I look to the other side of the crossing – the people there are rooted to the ground watching. The traffic lights above us are waving violently. I’m aware of a rumbling sound. Slowly the ground below us slows down. The buildings and the trees gradually stop swinging. It seems that the last to cease dancing are the traffic lights. Everyone in the street remained calm, even with the tower blocks swaying above us and over our heads.
We cross the road – the lights carried on functioning throughout the aftershock. The pavements have filled with people who have evacuated from the surrounding buildings. We draw closer to our hotel and see a crowd of people standing outside the station building – they must have evacuated everyone. We try to go back up to our hotel which you have to reach by a lift to the reception on the 6th floor. The lift isn’t working – no doubt because it was stopped with the earthquake. We wait and a young receptionist from the hotel appears. She leads us down two floors down escalators which are no longer moving, and then along a long corridor and through a door to a stairway. There is another hotel receptionist there and she asks us if we are OK. Daijobu desu (we’re OK) we reply. We climb up the stairs to our room on the 11th floor.
The television is on the floor, as are the mug and glass which were on the desk in the room. We look out the window, down across the train tracks below us. The trains must have been stopped running as we don’t see any. The sky is turning black and it starts to rain, lightning filling the sky.
As I’ve been writing this, there has been a series of more much smaller aftershocks. I can see why both Tanaka-san and Mika said that sometimes they weren’t sure whether it was an aftershock or their imagination. The ground is like some kind of beast that keeps moving, sometimes with anger as it roars and rears itself, flexing its muscles, sometimes just a gentle roll as it purrs, sometimes resting but always ready to pounce. Up on the 11th floor it’s like being in turbulence in a plane at times. I’d much rather be here in a new building, up in the air, than down in the street looking up. I trust this building.
We pack our torches to be on the safe side and as the lift still isn’t working, we walk down from the 11th floor to the ground floor, and up again by escalators to the 3rd floor, where the walkways take us to the station. We walk through the passage in the station looking for somewhere to eat. We see people, school children in uniform, business men in suits, waiting. A group of uniformed staff are grouped round the departure board for the trains. It is showing no departures – the trains aren’t running. Emerging at the north side of the station, we look across to Marui, a department store, but the restaurant floor is totally black – it must still be closed after the 11th March earthquake. We go to a favourite restaurant which is nearby. It’s open. We take off our shoes at the entrance and put them in the lockers, and are shown to a table.
While we’re eating, the building starts vibrating. I look across the restaurant. A group of business men are continuing talking. The vibrations become stronger, and I see one of the chefs look up and glance at another. What will the beast do this time? The vibrations diminish and then cease.
I could cope quite happily with the radiation issue here, but with an earth that can turn into an angry beast at any moment?
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Sister
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Terrifying!
Oh my goodness, this sounds absolutely terrifying! I am so glad you are not injured. I definitely could not have coped with your 'angry beast'. Your poor Japanese friends - they have had weeks of stress like this. We keep thinking of you. Lots of love xxxx.