A Birthday, a Treehouse and an Earthquake in Japan

Give or take, the second Monday of January is "everyone's" twentieth birthday here. It's actually a National Holiday and those who turned twenty in the last twelve months (not precisely but, run with me here) is celebrated. The girls wear beautiful kimono and the guys try to wear a suit. The girls do it better... There are town meetings when the responsibility of adulthood is extolled to all and sundry by the great and the good of the community. And then friends, for some they may not have seen each other since graduating High School, head into town and catch up on their latest adventures. It's an important day in the life. 

And so, like many others, I'll walk into Shibuya and enjoy the spectacle. The stations used to be overflowing with excitement but these days more will take a taxi direct to the forum rather than rail and a walk. And when the ceremony is over, they're all adults. I quite like the concept, it's good to see the recognition and reward they've all achieved to this point, it's not going to be easy going forward, but this is their day and I'm always grateful to be a silent witness.

New Years Resolutions are not something of a "thing" here but I've never quite kicked the habit. And so, this year, it's "Podcasts"! But, to be honest so was last year so let's just call it a "Carry-Over". Took me four years to hold a photo exhibition but I did have the excuse of a small global pandemic getting in the way for that one (https://www.instagram.com/i_tsurulife/ if you were wondering). Actually managed to (finally)  create a book of the work too. If you take a look, most are friends and about half speak English which always adds to the creative charm (sadly my Japanese sucks but you kind of raise the bar as time goes by and so it always feels like you're on the bottom rung).

Today, as I write, is Kobe Earthquake Day. Not recognised as such but I remember coming to work (in Tokyo) to hear there's been a small quake in the western city of Kobe. Turned out that it was so massive all sensor and communication links had been severed and so no one really appreciated the scale at first. I remember watching the news as the numbers climbed throughout the day eventually reaching some 5,000+ souls lost and the fires starting. The city turned red as night fell and I put a tape in, recording it till morning. Still have that tape.

Earthquakes aside, one of the real pleasures of living in this land is welcoming others new to town and, with a friend, we welcomed two Canadians who were in for the evening having spent two days snowed under in Hokkaido (them, rather than us). A wonderful backstreet location ("Kaikaya By the Sea" if you were wondering) involved introducing them on how to order sake, the elegance of chopsticks and sashimi to die for. Ten minutes from Shibuya Crossing (the crazy one), it's an easy walk and within a stone's throw of Nombe Yokocho (literally "Drunkards' Alley", an area created post war as somewhere to go in a burned out city, it's a little like a Charles Dobson experience (you may need to look, that particular reference, up) for a final nightcap. A night to remember was enjoyed by all!

And so, thirty five years after arriving in Japan for two (and being locked up at Narita airport on arrival, but that's another story for another day), I'm wondering where this year will take me. I have a place in the mountains to pass on, a two ton treehouse to dismantle (hopefully without injury, at least to me) and a car that is showing its age. Should be good. Oh, and podcasts of course. Well, maybe, possibly, downhill, with a following breeze... 

89.7 - The most important number in an earthquake

At  5.46 on a cold January morning in 1995, as the first Shinkansen prepared itself for the journey west from Osaka, a 6.9M earthquake struck some twenty kilometers south of the city of Kobe. There was no tsunami however, as the temblors rushed through the city they reflected off the mountains that encircle the prefecture to the north. And caused an interference pattern that flattened the metropolis in under twenty seconds. Over 6,000 lost their lives that day.

Famously, the elevated highway, snaking along the coast, wavered and then collapsed. Cars were crushed and an overnight bus hung, front wheels in free air, becoming the global image of the catastrophe. Fires ripped through the carnage, especially in the old, wooden, quarters of the city. They would continue through the night as rescue was catastrophically delayed. And, in the days before the internet, with the power grid razed, the only information came via battery powered radio. 

Many learnings came from that day one being to stop the government restricting the roll out of the now ubiquitous mobile phone (they were just mobile then, no smarts...) and another was to grant licenses across the country to new, English speaking, radio stations. The new broadcasters contractually bound their bi-lingual teams to live within walking distance of their studio to ensure service could continue if possible. And, if we're ever hit by the big one in Tokyo, one of those can be found at 89.7 in glorious FM stereo.

Sometimes you need to cry to be strong

On Saturday, March 11, 2012 I sat down in front of a video camera to record a simple thank you message to all those who had so selflessly helped in one way or another a year before when, at 2.46 on a cold and wet afternoon, first the earth shook and then the seas came. And they didn't stop. And I couldn't make the video. I knew the words I wanted to say and the people I wanted to thank but the sound simply wouldn't come. Each time I pressed the red record button I choked. Time and time again.

On a March weekend some seventeen years earlier I had visited Kobe to see a city destroyed. Small groups of people were gathered in the wreckage saying prayers for the family members they'd lost. At the time I thought this was the closest I would ever see to a war zone, something, thankfully, I have never experienced. Within twenty seconds the city had been razed and nearly 6,000 lost. I grew up in the countryside of northern England. We didn't have earthquakes there, or tsunami or typhoons, tornados or floods for that matter. We just had rain.

So I packed up the camera a walked with my son back into the house, turning on the television and watching the memorial services. My son had made a video a year earlier. Many had but this one made just a little difference. A message I'd received from Tohoku from a lady there made the point. We were all so shocked that day we'd forgotten to cry but here note, written from a shelter, told me how it had helped her start to weep. With strangers all around she'd cried like a child. And then she felt strong. And that was good.

Miki Endo stayed at her desk announcing over the city loud speaker system
that the wave was coming. She saved hundreds in her town at the cost of
here own life. March 11, 2011.

The day a city walked home

After 9/11, so the story goes, people in New York started to keep running sneakers under their desks. On the day of the tragedies, hundreds of thousands had no choice but to walk home, many for hours. Like most of us, those regular people were simply wearing their usual everyday outfit for work including their daily shoes. And those just made the evacuation of downtown Manhattan all that much harder.

A decade later there was an earthquake in Japan. Within minutes of the magnitude 9 the subways were at a standstill, the elevated highways were in automatic shutdown and gridlock hit, bringing the city to a halt. And in a re-enactment of that day in 2001, a city started to walk home. Millions of people had no option but to start a long journey. Women in heels, men in leather flats. For many it was too far, home being days rather than hours away by foot. And for many others, they simply didn't know how to get home, living their lives underground, they didn't know which way to go.

Japan is an organised, consensual culture. As the city closed and people started to move there was no panic despite the continued aftershocks, the first of which, in its own right, was greater than the one that had razed Kobe to the ground. But as the traffic lights turned red, people waited patiently, no pushing and no jostling until the lights turned green again. And then the mass, as one, moved on. And as the city started to slowly recover in the weeks and months to follow, people started to keep running sneakers under their desks.

Simple steps to prepare for an earthquake

With the current terrible events Nepal dominating the headlines, the power of the planet is front and centre on our television screens once again. Although there is always the Monday-morning-Quarterback who "predicted" the Big One was coming from watching his fish swim in circles or local sheep climb mountains, it remains an alchemists dream to actually be able to do so. The science of today can predict (to an extent) where an earthquake will happen but not yet when. Even then, Kobe was on a surprise unknown fault line and no one believed Tohoku could produce a 9.0.

If you live in an earthquake zone, whether it's Japan, California or Italy, you accept that it's a fact of life you are going to experience one at some point. But if you live your life worrying about it, better to move to the Australian Outback or middle England and save your stress levels. However, having been "lucky" enough to be in Japan for both the Kobe and Tohoku quakes, there are a number of actions that become obvious post-event that you can easily take in advance. This won't prevent a quake, but it might make the difference afterwards. Not an exhaustive list but here are a few thoughts:

1   Ensure there is nothing over the bed that can fall on you. Earthquakes happen at night as well as the day and the last thing you want is your favourite glass-framed picture landing on your head when one does.

2   Have a communication plan with your family. In the event of a major incident the phone lines will be down within minutes and may remain out of action for several days. But anything internet based may still work including Skype, Facebook, Twitter etc even from your phone.

3   Know the school policy in the instance of an earthquake. Do you pick the children up or will they be sent home? And then, what happens if neither is possible and night is closing in? 

4   Set the "Find-my-Phone" system for your family's smartphones. After the first thirty seconds of shock the next thing you're going to be thinking about is where's your family. Once you know that, it is so much easier to decide what to do next.  

5   Prepare an earthquake bag. In fact, prepare two and keep them in separate places in the house in case one becomes unreachable. Include the standards: water, money, basic medical kit, rain covers etc. And use a bag with wheels. You might be walking with it a long way.

But most of all, don't worry about it everyday. Enjoy your life. As far as we know, it's the only one you've got down here.

The flotsam and jetsam of Fukushima

"Highly radioactive" is a somewhat emotional phrase being regularly applied to the debris drawn into the Pacific Ocean after the tsunami of March 2011. Although elements of this disaster have been washing up on the shores of the west coast of North America for quite some time now, recently the first traces of radiation, identified to come from Fukushima, have also been identified along the Oregon shores. You needed to read a long way into the reports to see the levels were fractions of fractions of a percent of the everyday background radiation. Not really something to worry about but it makes a great headline.

The debris field is the remnants of millions of tons of the everyday items that made up the towns and villages of the Tohoku coast that was scoured away that day. Whole habitats simply disappeared along with everything they contained. A football crossed the oceans quickly and was emotionally returned to its owner months later. A motorbike, a Hog, kept in a weather-proof plastic garden shed landed in British Columbia and was refurbished and presented to a delighted owner. The wreckage of floating docks, ghost ships, houses and even fishing tanks with live fish still in them (hmmm, I question that one) regularly wash up on the shores of the Pacific countries now.

The debris itself set off on its sojourn across the oceans in the days before the meltdown at Fukushima and is generally not considered to be radioactive or pose a risk of wild mutation. What it does carry is the ability to pollute the shorelines when the wreckage comes to rest and potentially this poses an even greater risk is to wildlife. The flotsam carries with it hitchhikers, species native to the waters of Japan but that were not necessarily established elsewhere. Although the process of ocean current transfer has always existed, this time it is on a scale never seen before. Radiation isn't the problem, fare dodging passengers are. This could be an ocean wide environmental disaster to follow the natural one of 2.42, March 11, 2011. But it just might be forgotten until it's too late.

Stay Strong Japan

After the earthquake of March 2011 the world was galvanised into action. Rescue crews were on the first flights in. No repeat of Kobe, no ridiculous excuses for not accepting the help this time, Japan opened it's house and said "please help". The US military cleared the roads in Operation Friendship, and South Koreans worked hand in hand with Japanese clearing houses one by one. New Zealand sent a team despite the devastating earthquake in Christchurch a few weeks before. No questions asked.

My company at the time shipped tens of thousands of winter jackets north; it was still snowing. Our main competitor, unable to ship product due to damage at their distribution centre, donated a equal amount to the emergency aid funds. The roads were closed to all but emergency traffic but some slipped through. A friend filled his truck with supplies and drove 350km to Tohoku. He sat for hours as people queued and took a few needed items and then he drove back to Tokyo only to repeat the process again and again.

If you're of the generation that saw "Live Aid" in the summer of 1985, you'll remember that moment when David Bowie paused his performance to play a video, a graphic display of the famine in Africa, hauntingly set to the music of Drive by The Cars. Suddenly it was more than real and the world collectively choked back a quiet sob. Moments like that are rare, they stay will you. And in it's own small way, after the tsunami, it happened again. If you have a few minutes, here is something special. 

Stay Strong Japan

Foreshock - March 9, 2011

The mega-quake of March 11, 2011 didn't arrive unheralded. On March 9, soon before lunch at 11.45 in the morning, the earth moved. A magnitude 7.3 temblor, 160kms out into the ocean, shook the city of Sendai and soon the signs were swaying in Tokyo, some 250kms further on. We were in our office as the shaking started and it was clear this was a major incident. 

As the waves of an earthquake travel through the ground they spread out in a similar way to the cars in a motor race. Eventually the earthquake is no longer a single shock but a series of rolling convulsions. The longer the tremor continues, the further away the origin; if you can feel it. And if you can feel it, it will have been big. A long duration earthquake, even if it feels mild, was a major one somewhere. 

After we saw the location we confirmed the staff in Tohoku were safe and then sent a short note to a business partner who's office was close to Fukushima checking everything was OK. And then we carried on. It had been a while since we'd experienced an earthquake and the subject was a hot topic of conversation over lunch. And that was all we thought of the matter. At least for the next two days.

A tsunami warning in Tohoku

At 8.06 this morning, northern Japan was shaken by an M6.9 earthquake centred off the Sanriku coast of Tohoku, northeast Japan. Although barely perceptible in Tokyo it was intense closer in and triggered a tsunami warning which appeared on all television and satellite stations within minutes. The city of Ofunato issued an evacuation order for the port area which remained in place for over two hours. Thankfully the wave came in at only a few centimetres, not enough to cause any damage.  

A magnitude 6.9 is a serious earthquake, enough to slam doors 200km away; by comparison the 1995 Kobe event was an M6.8 and that razed a city being closer in. Mild by comparison, here is an M6.6 I filmed on my iPhone sitting in my office in Tokyo about 250km from a quake back in 2011 (we had become a little blasé about aftershocks by then). Remembering that the scale is logarithmic, this morning's rattle will have been significantly stronger than this in Iwate, the closest prefecture to the epicentre. 

You can see the fours and threes being reported across the map below. Rather than representing magnitude (M), essentially a measure of the energy released by an earthquake, the Japanese system measures the local intensity of the temblor, in this case by prefecture. Effectively it tells you the strength of the shaking at any particular location and is recorded on a scale of 1 - 7. Luckily this morning's quake was way offshore, reducing the impact as the shockwaves spread and dissipated, but it still won't have been too pleasant. Hope you guys are OK up there today.

A TV screenshot thirty minutes after this mornings M6.9 

The sorrow of Fukushima

March 11, 2011 saw one histories greatest earthquakes. I use the word "great" here in the sense of scale; there was nothing good that actually came from it. The devastation it unleashed on the Tohoku coast line will scar the region for decades to come with many areas unlikely to ever be rebuilt or recover as the younger generation looks to the cities further south to start a new life. Many communities were declining before the events that day, now they're in free fall.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant remains a catastrophe area with exclusion zones still in place. Decommissioning will not begin for many years to come and the technology required doesn't exit for much of the process. But the meltdown at Fukushima caused a secondary issue, it became a "distraction" to the real and present crisis. The meltdown and radiation released forced the relocation of many thousands of people but the tsunami forced the relocation of hundreds of thousands when nearly twenty thousand died in the tsunami within minutes of the earthquake. 

Over a million buildings were partially or totally destroyed by the combined effects of the temblor and black wall of water and in many areas the reconstruction process has hardly begun. And the world and Japan remain focussed on the one issue, Fukushima. The sense of urgency has left the country though 170,000 still live in temporary housing. The Mayor of Rikuzentakata has issued an open invitation for anyone to visit and maybe a little gaiatsu, external pressure, might help things along. To paraphrase The Economist, "what will all the foreigners think when they come for the Olympics?".  It's been four years, that should have been enough.

Just run. Run uphill. Don't worry about the others. Save yourself first. And tell the future generations that a tsunami once reached this point. And that those who survived were those who ran. Uphill. 

So run! Run uphill!

Tokyo Tower - more than simply a tourist trap

Tokyo Tower, the bright orange and white communications structure standing in the heart of downtown, used to be on everyone's tourist list of must see sights. I never really understood this as although the view stretches across the entire city, it has to be said, Tokyo is a pretty dull lump of concrete to look at in the day time. Nighttime is a different story, as the lights come on, the city seems to come alive. 

Constructed in 1958 and standing at 330m it remained the largest structure in Japan until recently overtaken by Sky Tree. The new communications tower was needed for the conversion to the digital age but suffers the same fate. Tokyo is boring in daylight. The tower itself looks pretty cool though. The chunks of ice fall from it and crashing through the roofs of houses in the neighbourhood remain a bit of a problem though street patrols, to warn people impending doom, seem to have allayed some of the fears.

But back to Tokyo Tower. With its cheap souvenir stores and frankly a bit of a peculiar odour about it, it was heading for national irrelevance. That was until they illuminated it and it becomes something truly inspiring at night. During the earthquake of 2011, the violence of the tremors was so extreme the mast actually kinked. It took a year to repair it but during that time, as Tokyo went dark, it stood as something fairly special in the night skies. It gave us a little bit more hope to keep going.

The day Kobe was razed to the ground

It was a year to the day since the Northridge earthquake. I was sitting in the office, a young, fresh faced manager, on what seemed liked a regular morning in Tokyo. My boss arrived and mentioned there seemed to have been an earthquake in the western city of Kobe and two people had been reported killed. Over the weekend there had been a brace of sizable earthquakes in Tokyo, one large enough to disable the gas supplies that are on automatic trip switches in modern buildings. And the morning carried on as normal. 

I was sent out to a clients office just before noon, a bank based in Kamiyacho, a financial suburb of the city. When I arrived the office was silent, everyone standing watching one of the many TV screens around the room. The Kobe earthquake had been so extreme it had destroyed the sensors alerting the country to the disaster. Only slowly was the information trickling out. The Korean Government had established an emergency team by 9.00AM when the Japanese PM was said to still be in bed. The Cabinet had yet to meet. Over 600 were now being reported to have died.

We all left work early that day. I went home and switched on the television, putting a tape into the recorder. For the next eight hours I watched as the city of Kobe burned; the full extent of the disaster only becoming clear as night fell and the scale of the fires could be seen. The highways had collapsed and the city of Kobe was burning to the ground as the gas mains ruptured. There were heroes and villains that day but today, twenty years on, it is just time to take a moment and reflect on what could have been, but wasn't. Over 6,000 died that day. I still have the tape.

Nuclear power, earthquakes, tsunamis and the choices for Japan. And the planet.

This blog is designed and deliberately written to be family friendly. As such, here, I don't tackle controversial subjects and don't aim to argue subjective points. I simply set out to explain interesting aspects of life in Japan. And following a couple of major earthquakes over the last few days which always re-ignites the debate, here we go on nuclear power….

Before the earthquake of March 2011, approximately 30% of Japan's electricity was generated by the nuclear industry. Soon after, all 100+ reactor cores were shut down for politically acceptable "maintenance". And since then Japan has been looking for an alternative. Scrambling that first summer the country brought older power stations out of mothballs, started to import vast quantities of oil and natural gas and even plugged two massive floating generators used for powering oil rigs into the Tokyo grid.

Whilst renewables are obviously a good idea, the lack of power storage systems means they will remain marginal until that issue is resolved. Tidal power is beginning to develop, wind farms are progressing and even micro-hydro plants used in irrigation of rice fields are growing in popularity. But in reality major schemes such as terawatt hydroelectric damns (which produce significant greenhouse gasses through decay of foliage by the way) are years if not decades away. So the question is, do we continue to burn fossil fuels and risk the atmosphere, or do we switch the nuclear power back on and risk the land? Or alternatively do we switch off the lights and use less power?

Before the earthquake; Tokyo's lights are bright and vibrant

Tokyo after the quake. People switched off those lights to save power.

Europe at night. Does each light bulb have to be on?

You can track earthquakes in Japan too

On Wednesday we experienced another aftershock in Japan, an echo of the M9.0 from March 2011. I posted a map showing the 949 quakes over M5.0 we've experienced since then and had several questions asking where did I find the data. Very simple, soon after the earthquake a developer called Paul Nicholls created a real time map linked into the Japan sensor network; it became something of a hobby tracking the shocks as we were thrown sideways on a regular basis. Here is a follow-up image showing all 3,234 quakes (as of 5.00PM today) we've had the pleasure to host since then and if you'd like to follow this site just go to Japanquakemap.com. And thank you to Paul for creating this site.

However, if you'd like to be a little more proactive following earthquakes in Japan then download this App, Yurekuru ("Earthquake Coming"). In the settings you can choose where in Japan you'd like to follow and the level of quake you'd be concerned about. Mine is set to Shibuya in central Tokyo and only alerts me for anything over M5.0. Below that doesn't seem too exciting these days.

The system is linked again into the government sensor network. When an earthquake is detected it issues an alert across the entire data network and you'll receive a few seconds warning. 

A few seconds doesn't sound much but it's about the time it takes for you to stop watching TV and get to the children's room to ensure they're safe and not scared. At those moments ten seconds is akin to an eternity.

And so if you're sitting in New York and have family in Fukushima, it will still work. And you can track when we're running to the kids' room to check they're ok and hopefully watching them quietly fall back to sleep.

Aftershock - the battered coastline of Fukushima

10.51 this morning and the house started to move again. The first p-wave came through as a sudden jolt followed by the s-wave, the slow rolling tremor that causes the real damage. Fortunately it wasn't too strong but at about thirty seconds it was obvious somewhere wasn't having a good time. Checking the earthquake App on my phone I can see the epicentre was just off the coast of Fukushima. Again.

The earthquake of March 11, 2011 was a little further north than Fukushima but close enough to change the way the world sees nuclear power. And then the aftershocks continued to pound the coastline over the next few months, slowly reducing in frequency but not actually coming to a final halt. Today's quake was a M5.4, not large by Japan standards but enough to rattle Tokyo some 300km away. 

The map below doesn't show all the earthquakes to hit Japan post 3/11. It only shows the 949 we've experienced over M5.0. In all there have been over 3,000 since the main quake. And on the Tohoku coastline, just about dead centre in the area covered with dots, is the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Much closer to the action, they won't have been having a good morning.

Magnitude 9: A serialisation from Fifty-Six Days - An Earthquake in Japan

At 2.46pm on Friday, March 11, 2011 the office began to move. Earthquakes are common in Japan and usually begin with a jolt and then a few seconds of shaking before they subside again. I was in a meeting at the time with Paul and two others from McKinsey, a consultancy. Paul being relatively new to Japan was at first interested in the experience. He hadn’t been through a noticeable earthquake before having not felt the foreshock two days earlier.

Soon though, we all realized this was no ordinary earthquake. The heavy meeting table we were sitting at, and soon took shelter under, started to move violently around. Ceiling panels began to shake and we could hear them falling outside the door. Earthquake proof cabinets bolted to the walls sprang open and spilled their contents on the floor.

The earthquake had lasted for five minutes by the time the tremors started to subside. We looked out of the office and called if everyone was alright. We saw an entire floor of shocked staff, some in tears, everyone with the contents of their desks now on the floor around them. The standard wisdom immediately after an earthquake is to remain inside the building due to the danger injury from falling debris as you step outside. That is, unless you believe the building itself was no longer safe. With the ceiling caved in in places and cracks in concrete walls we took the decision to evacuate everyone as quickly as possible.

Clearing people from the far end of the floor, the fourth in a five-story building, we began to help staff towards the stairwells. One had recently broken his leg but refused all assistance and made his way with everyone else down the stairs. Another had left her mobile phone behind on her desk and was trying to work her way back against the tide to retrieve it. We convinced her to exit now and worry about her phone later. We cleared the third floor and then found chaos on the second where racking and samples of new apparel were now thrown around the room. We ensured everyone was out and moved on to the first floor where we found people had already left and were moving to the open parking areas outside the building.

Hurrying to the entrance we saw groups of people standing under the vast glass awning outside the building and virtually rugby tackled them as we moved them to safety. Better a little rain than several tons of glass falling on you. Then it struck us we’d forgotten to clear the top floor. Looking around at the number of people in the car park we reckoned they’d figure it out though and kept moving people away from the building.

Although we didn’t know it at the time, we had just experienced one of the largest earthquakes anywhere in history. This M9.0 had released ten times the power of all the earthquakes in Japan in the last hundred years. We looked around, many people were in shock, everyone trying their unresponsive phones. People were looking to us for guidance on what they should do next.

It was obvious we were going to have to close the office for the rest of the day and as it turned out we closed it for the following week too. We started to tell people to begin to make their way home as quickly as possible. If they lived too far to walk, find a hotel, we’d cover the cost; if they could find a taxi, we’d pay for that too. With the immediate closure of the rail and subway systems, many people realized they didn’t know how to get home. Living their lives on the subway system, they didn’t even know which way to walk.

Wham! At this point the first aftershock hit us, a 7.9, massive in its own right. Standing in the car park I watched as the fifth floor of the building swayed and was glad we’d made the decision to move outside.

At times like this the first thing you think about is family. The mobile phone system was already down, locked with millions of people trying to make calls to loved ones all at the same time. I tried to text Masami but this jammed too and I had no idea how my twelve-year old son, Kai, was. Thoughts of his school collapsing scream through my mind.

It was after nearly twenty minutes that I remembered he had his iPhone with him and that I could track it. The earthquake had struck ten minutes before the normal end of school. I searched for him and saw that he was on Meguro Dori, which meant he was on the school bus. If the school bus had survived that meant the school had survived and he was safe. It also meant that I knew to make my way home rather than to the school and that I could now focus on the several hundred people around me and not worry for a short while.

The relief with the knowledge that he was safe was immense and in the days that followed I sent a thank you message via a friend to Apple, it really had made a difference.

But I still couldn’t reach Masami. 

It was March and still cold with a light rain falling. Letting everyone back in briefly to pick up coats and jackets for their journey home I went back to my office on the fourth floor. My desk had moved thirty centimeters from the wall and had only been stopped from going further by a cabinet moving in the opposite direction. I had tried calling and texting from my iPhone but nothing was transmitting at this point and wouldn’t for the next few days.

The corporate email was still working and I sent a message to our head office in Germany to let them know we’d suffered a major earthquake and were evacuating the office. For some reason, as we’d initially cleared the building, I had started to video the events as they unfurled. This short video was later distributed quickly around the world so that the Group could see the devastation for themselves.

I’d been in Japan for the Kobe disaster, a M6.8 that had razed the city in 1995. I’d had friends who had been through it and had later talked to me about the experience. I knew the phones wouldn’t be working any time soon and that the rail and subways would stay closed until they could be thoroughly checked.

I also knew that the highways across Tokyo would be immediately closed for emergency inspection, if they were still standing at all. This meant the roads were going to very soon hit gridlock and using a car was going to be a liability. At this point we didn’t know if the highway system had survived inside the capital but we could see dark clouds of smoke rising from the direction of the port and the main oil terminals.

We urged staff to start the walk home as quickly as possible. Over the next few days we received many emails from people who had taken the advice, left immediately and been able to return safely to their homes by evening or had found hotel rooms to stay. We also received many messages from people saying they wished they’d taken our advice and that by waiting to begin their journeys they had been stranded for the night. We were just glad they were safe.

Hotels in Tokyo started to fill quickly and many responded by offering options to double up in rooms or provided blankets to people sheltering in lobbies. The scale of what was happening around us was beginning to become clear and we realized things wouldn’t be normal for a while.

Once the car parks had been emptied of everyone who wanted to leave, I started to walk home with MDR, a friend from the office who lived in the same direction. It was only eight kilometers and I walked it regularly simply for the exercise.

The good news was that we were seeing relatively little structural damage. Later though we found out that liquefaction had caused major destruction across northern Tokyo. Liquefaction is a deadly side effect of earthquakes where ground water is forced to the surface by the shaking, turning the earth to a viscous liquid. Buildings sink into the ground and collapse and storm drains float to the surface being pipes filled with nothing more than air.

I had walked the ground in Kobe and seen ten story buildings lying in the streets. We seemed to have been saved that fate. At this point, where we were in central Tokyo, the infrastructure was relatively unscathed. In fact, the closest I came to harm as we walked back was when a construction truck reversed quickly into the road and nearly took out a group of pedestrians, including myself.

Halfway home, as we past the National Stadium, I remembered I had Skype on my phone and that Kai, if home by now, was very likely to have his Skype open on his computer. I tried to contact him and to my great relief, connected and heard his voice. Everything changes in a crisis and the first thing I heard him say was the dogs are safe. I smiled and asked if he was OK and where was his mother.

After confirming he was OK, and that Masami was also home and fine, I continued the journey in a much more positive frame of mind. However, these feelings were soon dampened as we walked along and saw crowds standing outside shop windows. The stores had turned television screens around to follow the news coverage and let people see what was happening as the first images of the tsunami were broadcast by helicopter. We watched in stunned silence as the black wave chased tiny cars along roads and slowly swallowed each up in its path. We knew we were watching people die and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Walking on through Shibuya, the central district of Tokyo near my home, we were met with waves of thousands of people, stranded and trying to make their own way home. Each day over two million people pass through Shibuya Station and it was now closed to all rail traffic. Most people simply had no choice and they began the very long queue for a bus which itself was going to be caught in the city gridlock soon if it could move at all.

Millions were now walking. Shibuya is not just crowded but full. There is no space between the thousands waiting in line for the buses. None will be coming and none will be leaving any time soon. Train lines are closed and road is their only way home. I watch from a footbridge for a few minutes and wonder how long they’ll have to wait.

Many have already decided it’s time to move. As the crowd leaves en masse they reach a crossing and everyone stops for the red light. No pushing. It turns green and the wave of people slowly moves off together. I wonder how many times that would be repeated this night.

I was fortunate living only an hour and a half walk from the office. I heard many stories later of friends walking twenty hours in business shoes or heels and the buses from the outer lying schools not being able to return children to their homes until the next morning. Yokohama International School enacted its emergency plan and placed children with local families for the night. One outlying international school started the long trek back into Tokyo only to be caught in the gridlock until morning.

The house survived without serious damage. Kai had moved the dog cages under the table so they’ll be safe and he’s found our cycling helmets, the best protection we have. Although it sounds a cliché from a disaster movie, Masami had actually been halfway through a hair appointment and came running out of the building only to see the cranes on top of the half constructed Hikarie building bending to the point of collapse.

I had a beer with MDR and we manage to Skype a message to his wife that he’s safe and will be home soon. He helps me right the television and then takes his leave.

An email arrives from my parents. They’ve heard about the earthquake and wonder if we’re OK as I haven’t contacted them. Normally if there is a report of an earthquake in Japan I’d call and let them know we’re all safe. This time there was still no telephone. I Skype and get through, telling them not to go to video mode. The networks will never take it.

That evening Skype became the lifeline. Whilst the phone systems were down, we found later than anything based on Internet communication still worked. Even Skype on my phone worked as this transmitted through the data networks rather than the voice ones. It allowed us not just to contact family outside Japan and reassure them we were still alive but also to start the process of coordinating our response to the unfolding crisis.

The first messages start to arrive asking if we’re ok. Offers of help but what can anyone do. Hugs from Vancouver, concern from the UK. Friends from school and university reach out, we’re in their thoughts.

That first night we sit watching the television with our shoes lined up at the front door for a quick exit if necessary. My earthquake bags are ready, one inside the house and another one outside in case the building collapses. We watch giant whirlpools forming off the coast and ocean freighters sitting on buildings where they’d been casually dropped, their final resting place until they would be cut up with acetylene torches months later. 

Fire was spreading across cities, something that seemed to go against the concept of the wall of water we were seeing. The first reports of deaths start to appear in the news broadcasts. A body here, two more there. Then a jump, the fire service in Minami-Sanriku reports hundreds of bodies lying in the streets. We knew that this would just be the beginning. And we still hadn’t heard of power station called Fukushima. We sleep fully dressed, the hallway lights on. Wham!

Clearing the building

 

Foreshock - an extract from Fifty-Six Days

Wednesday, 9 March 2011 started much like any other day so far that year.

Then Wham! The world moved sideways. There hadn’t been a sizable earthquake for a while and the building didn’t seem like it was enjoying it at all. Everything was over in a few seconds and I was glad that we weren’t any closer to the origin. We switched on the news and saw that the center was some 350 kilometers north from Tokyo off the coast of Sendai, the main city in Tohoku, northeast Japan. That’s what Tohoku means, northeast.

The catastrophe didn’t actually start for me on 11 March, 2011. It began here two days before at 1.54pm on March 9 when this M7.2 earthquake struck off the coast. Unbeknownst to us this foreshock was forty kilometers from where we were going to see the earth stretch and shatter two days later.

The shock was enough to rattle us and certainly got our attention. We had friends in Tohoku and as soon as we realized where it was we contacted them just to check everyone was alright. We also reached out to the stores we had in the area and confirmed all was OK there too.

Paul had been on the street when it happened and hadn’t felt anything, the shaking being masked by the rumble of heavy traffic. Asking about Xebio, a customer located in Koriyama, near the epicenter, I said to him “can’t hurt just to drop a note and ask if they need any help”. The reply we received was “thanks, all OK here, just a bit shaken”. And then life carried on.

What we didn’t know at this point was how our lives were about to change. The innocence of those two days now seems somewhat surreal. What was to come would see five minutes of extreme violence. Japan would move twenty meters closer to America, the coast subsiding and accelerating the giant wave that was generated as 500 kilometers of seabed ruptured creating a sound that could be detected from space as shockwaves encircled the earth. The catastrophe that would bring Japan so very close to collapse had begun.

When an earthquake strikes

Nine tenths of all the energy released in earthquakes in the last one hundred years in Japan was released at 2.46PM on March 11, 2011. Everyone knows what happened next as a massive black wave of water enveloped the coastline of Tohoku, north east Japan. In some areas the shape of the bays and inlets forced the water higher and higher to over one hundred and thirty feet; in others the flat coastal areas allowed it to sweep ever further inland devouring houses, farms, cars, trucks, people in its path.

The earthquake led to the tsunami and the tsunami led to the destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. As it failed so did the power to northern Japan and people started to turn the lights out. Gasoline was rationed from the following morning and remaining stocks would be exhausted within three days. Bottled water disappeared as rumours spread that the mains supply was contaminated with radiation and store shelves emptied as panic buying led to people hoarding, not knowing what to expect next.

In the following weeks Japan came close to collapse and Tokyo became all but a ghost town. The roads north were closed and the escape route west was shadowed by Fuji. If it erupted Japan would be cut in half. Confusing and contradictory messages from the government heightened the feeling of crisis and images appeared on line in the world's first digital disaster. It was fifty six days from the initial foreshock to the first day we didn't suffer a major aftershock. And if you want to read the story, here it is. 

Tokyo before the earthquake. The city lights are bright.

Two months after the earthquake. Life has become dark and silent. 

The Catfish are on the move - Earthquakes in Japan

This week has been a mobile one. As legend would have it, the namazu (catfish) deep under the earth have been a little restless. A M5.0 and M5.6 slightly up the coast from Tokyo were enough to ensure the windows were rattling and the doors banging. Business as usual since March 2011 on the whole. Life isn't quite as active as it used to be but the tectonic plates like to let us know they are still around.

In Japan it's possible to receive a warning of an impending earthquake providing a few seconds to ensure the kids are safe and brace yourself for what's coming. It works across an automated sensor network throughout the country. When one sensor detects an earthquake it issues an alert across the entire mobile phone system.  Not very useful if you're sitting on the epicentre as you'll feel it before the alert but if you're 100k's away, you'll get the warning before the impact.

Although now all phones have the software built-in there is a very useful third party App called Yurekuru (Temblor's Coming) that can provide the alert if you're using an older smartphone. And last year I found out that sitting on a friend's balcony in Los Angeles it works just fine from there too as it let me know Shibuya was under attack. So if you' like to follow earthquakes in Japan in real time, download Yurekuru, set the parameters, sit back, and wait for the  alarm. You too can join in the fun.

Namazu - the mother of all quakes

Earthquakes are generally considered to be by-products of plate tectonics. As the continental plates that make up the surface of the earth slowly drift across the globe they crash into each other in infinite slow motion. And the result is an earthquake. At least that's the commonly held theory.

In Japan there was another idea. It wasn't continental drift that had anything to do with it but a giant catfish, a namazu, far underground that when it thrashes around, the earth shakes. Normally the namazu is restrained by a god holding it down with a large stone, but every now and then it wriggles free and causes chaos.

And as this is now known to be the cause, the symbol for an earthquake emergency is now a catfish. The emergency service roads that provide access across cities and country in the case of a major quake are marked with a prominent fish. Keep clear if see one when the time comes and happy fishing.