Sometimes, just sometimes, it all goes horribly wrong, all at the same time. And that was my twenty four hours over the weekend. Everything started well, catch up with an old friend. Sat outside a wonderful little restaurant in Shibuya Yokocho (Shibuya Alley) in central Tokyo, we were just chatting when a little light rain started to fall. I'm English, my friend German, a little light rain is nothing. We carried on. Until the manager came out and said we had to go inside. We were fine and not worries but he looked serious and said "you have to go inside, now!". So we did. And in the next few minutes, the heaviest rainstorm Tokyo has seen in twenty years erupted. 12cm of rain an hour for the next four hours. He was right.
And then there was the matter of getting home. No chance of a taxi and (again, being English) no umbrella, the only option was to walk, across Shibuya Scramble, with the gods pouring a bucket of water over me. Twenty wet minutes later, I made it. Spectacular thunderstorm though, at which point I was kind of glad not to have a lightening rod over my head and at least the day was warm. But I looked like a drowned rat. I should've stayed at the cafe but my friend had to leave for work and I never enjoy sitting on my own, so home it was.
Changed clothes, dried off and sat down to watch "Project Hail Mary" (for non-Americans, a Hail Mary is 'a leap of faith'), good movie. And then the earthquake hit. Biggest in quite a while in Tokyo. M5.9, not as big as we've had in the past but enough so I had to grab the TV to stop it falling. On the Japanese measuring system, which measures intensity rather than actual energy released, it was a 5- on a scale up to 7, so pretty descent. And then I had to make it to a video shoot where I was due to be interviewed. Except for the fire trucks outside my house. Four of them, twenty fire fighters and a dozen or so police. So no driving and "a la hoof" again.
But I made it on time. Seventh floor. And of course the elevators were out because of the earthquake. So, hiking slowly, I made my way up. To meet a very nice French guy who let me know the shoot had been delayed by an hour but there was a coffee shop around the corner "and why did I look so red?" And this capped off the twenty-four hours, sitting with my friend, before all the above began, I was slowly being sun burned without knowing it. And now I was due to be videoed and looked like a carrot. You have to smile sometimes, nothing else to do.
