Hey!
Yesterday there was a big fat earthquake in Japan, northeast of Tokyo and Saitama, where I currently live. The quake caused a tsunamis and cities on the northern east coast were flooded and exposed to them. Also there are some problems with two nuclear reactors 240 km away from Tokyo, but from what I've heard, the radioactive stuff is blowing east, and according to Japanese news it's not going to cause much of a problem, but you never know.
I've heard rumors today that there'll be another quake much closer to Tokyo within a month, about 7+ on the earthquake scale (don't know how to spell the name of it).
There was another bigger earthquake today which we could feel when we were sitting in my friend's apartment in Iogi, close to Tokyo. There are smaller quakes pretty much all the time, and you can feel many of them, or maybe it's just my balance that is freaking out.
I was sitting in school at the time the first shake occurred. Our teacher was really calm and first he just said "Don't worry, just sit and laugh a bit, it'll probably pass soon", but then it escalated and he said "hmm... it seems to get a bit dangerous, right?", he went out to the corridor and spoke to another teacher, returned back to the classroom and told us we're getting outside. The earthquake escalated as we moved down the stairs, but the teachers were really nice and very calming so I didn't worry much. We all gathered outside and waited for it to calm down, and then we went back in to continue our classes, when another big quake occurred. We stayed inside that time though, since the building is pretty new and safe (hey, it's Tokyo) and our teacher was telling us funny stories and told us information about earthquakes and typhoons and what we should do if another quake happened on our way home.
After the quake was mostly over, all the students gathered on a nearby school's soccer field. People who lived nearby could go home, and others were recommended to stay close to get information about trains and the earthquake. We wen't to eat at burger king.
After that we returned to the soccer field, but it was empty, so we went to the train station (Takadanobaba, 高田馬場) and started to wait for the trains to start going again, but lots of people were waiting, and the trains didn't seem to be get going anytime soon, and after an hour of wait, me reeding a book and my friends doing their homework, they announced that maybe another big quake was coming, so we moved out of the station and started moving to the next town, Ikebukuro (池袋), where we would've changed to our next train. It was a flood of people walking between the towns, but it wasn't as crowded as we'd imagined.
We arrived in Ikebukuro after some time, and holy crap, our plans of taking a cab or train of bus home was obliterated by the sight of the lines of people. They were hundreds of meters with 5 people in width, waiting for taxis. Same for busses, and the trains didn't work. We asked a police about the way to the busstop for busses going towards Akabane (赤羽), and the line was the same as the others, so we started walking.
We came to a busstop later, and we'd passed a bus on the way there, so we waited a bit, but agreed that it'd be a waste of time and that we'd probably be better off walking, when two Chinese friends passed us by, so we joined up with them and walked a bit. Then a bus stopped nearby, so we jumped on it, and a usually 20-30min bus ride took about 2.5h, but it was pretty fun, and the bus driver kept joking, whenever someone asked, that'd we'd probably be there by 7.30 in the morning. We got off at Akabane, but for some reason there weren't many busses, so we started walking towards our homes, Nishikawaguchi (西川口), and Warabi(蕨(btw, many Japanese people don't even know this Kanji, that's pretty cool)). All in all, when we arrived in Warabi, it'd been about 6.5 hours since we left from Takadanobaba. And I was worried because I hadn't done my exercise in the morning when I was on my way to school that day, heh!
People were waiting for us at the guest house and were happy and relieved when we got back, and some people gathered in the kitchen to watch scary movies and wait for a Korean girl who hadn't arrived yet. I almost fell asleep at the table, so I went to my room, fell in my bed, and didn't care about the shakes I could still feel from time to time, I was too tired.
Of course it's horrible the thing that happened, but damnit it! It was pretty darn exciting, and it was a great trip back home from the school. I was in good company, and I met some nice people along the way home.
Today the trains worked pretty well with some minor delays, and me and a friend went to a Chinese friend's house to eat and hang out. It was really nice, and we felt some shakes, but it felt good and calming to be amongst friends.
People are mostly hanging out in the kitchen here in the guest house, watching the news and talking and eating. Even though people are worried about the exposed cities and the nuclear plants, the mood isn't that bad, and we're still having a pretty good time here.
Now I'm tired from writing such a long post, but now we're okay here at least!
Until next time!
