A Case of the Rumbles

8/10/09

We woke up to an earthquake last night. Actually, I think it was an aftershock. Both Andy and I sat straight up in bed, “Did you feel that?!” The violent shaking only lasted a few seconds. It wasn’t nearly as frightening as the tremor we had felt earlier in the night while we were at a fireworks-watching party with one of the English teachers from Andy’s school, Ito-sensei. He had picked us up at 5:00 and, after stopping by his house to pick up his wife, Yumiko, and daughter, Ami, had driven us down to the waterfront where the party would be held in a concrete building across the street from the water. The building’s owner was a friend of his wife’s, so we had a reserved room on the 5^th floor with a spectacular view of where the night’s festivities would be taking place. The problem was that it had been raining all evening, and there was little chance of the fireworks actually being set off tonight. It turned out that there were no fireworks, but had there been, we would have had box seats to the event! What a shame.

Although the building was in a desirable location for the night’s events, the building itself was by no means prime real estate. Upon entering there was a damp, musty smell – one that I’m starting to get used to here – and when we got to our designated room on the 5^th floor, there were two gaping holes in the ceiling and obvious water damage to the walls and floor. Wallpaper was sloughing off at the corners, there was a moldy discoloration to the walls underneath, and the carpet-like floor covering had shrunken and separated to reveal the concrete floor beneath it. There was no question that the building was in disrepair.

This was all fine and had no real effect on the function of the party, that is until one of the guests interrupted my conversation to tell me to look at the windows. I turned around to see that the windows were shaking ever so slightly and steadily… it took me a moment to realize that this was an earthquake. It was subtle enough that, had I not gauged it by the visual cue of the rattling windows, I might not have noticed that it was happening at all. Being alerted to the fact that we were in the midst of an earthquake was not so troubling; it was my awareness that we were in a dilapidated building during said earthquake that triggered my panic response. I immediately asked the other guests what the protocol was for earthquakes, should we go outside? Stay inside and take cover? What should we do?! As I expected, the correct answer was to leave the building. But our hosts just reassured me that everything was fine and that it would be over soon. But their reassurance did nothing to quell the visions that began to flood my brain, of me under a pile of rubble less than a week after having arrived in this country. Was this really how it was going to end? Was this how I was gonna go? Did I have to come all the way to Japan to meet my fate in this crappy building on a rainy Friday night?