It's half past eight now. It's been about twenty nine hours since the quake first hit.
I was on the third floor (known as the fourth floor here and in the US). I was setting up the class with the new teacher who was to be observing me. Two days prior, I had felt a mild earthquake in the same room, but I was the only one who noticed it. So when I felt a mild shaking, I asked him if he felt it. He said it did, and it grew a little in intensity.
I stood up, and began to open the doors in the school. There was a two-year-old, two three-year-olds and a five-year-old in the next room, waiting for class to begin. Their mothers were there, and were holding them normally, in a non-panicking fashion.
I looked out the large windows, and saw power lines swaying, but as I looked, the earthquake didn't subside, as it always had done, and just grew stronger.
I was holding onto the window frame, and could feel it shaking, and I started watching everything outside slowly move more and more. Then the window frame started to jerk violently in my hand. The Japanese assistant shouted out, and one child screamed. I remember watching the small building opposite, and its top floor, the same height as me, was stretching forward and back, in a large arc. It was close to striking another building. Trees, signs, antennas, power lines were all going back and forth, and the intense movement lasted a while.
The school doesn't have much around to fall, except the large clock in the hallway. It came down loudly, and that was the first thing that scared the children. I can't give exact numbers as to the length of the main shaking, but it was more than a minute. I stood over the children, putting my arms above their heads and reassuring them it was fine. All the mothers and staff spoke in calm hushed tones, and not one child cried.
Through the whole ordeal, I was planning my immediate movements if a larger shock hit us, and they always involved protecting the children first. Either picking them up and running, or just diving over them. I felt a strong protection for them, especially the ones I had known for a while.
Our school's policy is to keep teaching no matter what, so we went ahead with the planned lesson. I felt two major aftershocks during the hour-long lesson, and minor shocks throughout. The water reservoir in humidifier by the television was transparent. We could see the water level, and at almost no point in the first hour was it not moving.
Whenever a major aftershock would come, I would resume my position above the children. But nothing as intense as the first blast came along. For the class after, only one child was there, and she'd turned up before the earthquake started. She had a private lesson, and since she's such a nice girl, I just enjoyed the time. The aftershocks were smaller now, and less worrisome, but I was still nervous. I wanted to be outside, but I knew my building would be pretty much as safe as anywhere.
I kept checking my Kindle for tweets, emails and BBC news. When I learned that the epicentre was 250 miles away, my heart dropped. I knew there'd be people so much worse off. I updated Twitter and emailed Alyssa, who had told me she was trapped in Akihabara. My incessant checking was hampered only by the fact that I hadn't charged the Kindle in weeks, and after a while it could no longer support internet.
For the third class had nobody show up. I did administrative tasks until finishing time, and I ventured out into a changed city. I walked past shops that'd normally be open, but were instead covered in their own smashed merchandise. The train station had roped off all entrances, signs that showed the time of the earthquake spoke of no trains until further notice, and I knew things were really bad when Starbucks closed early. I grabbed a couple of burgers and a coffee from McDonalds, and just tried to kill time until something would better inform us.
Eventually that closed too, despite being 24-hour. I walked around, and saw an express train moving at about 2 miles an hour down the tracks. I also saw impatient people running across the train-tracks while the barriers were down. I went to a sushi bar, and killed time until it closed, trying out different things I wouldn't normally eat. An older man chatted with me a bit, about how it was his biggest earthquake and how he'd lived in Tokyo his whole life. But oddly, he mostly made jokes to me, even a couple in English.
And I was struck then at how well the people were taking this. They news of the devastation was out, and the inevitable death toll was being debated, but most people were in high spirits. As far as accidents go, while they are disheartened, they don't let it stop their lives. I was reading Haruki Murakami's Underground a few days prior, and one of the people interviewed spoke about how he could accept dying from sarin like he could accept dying in an accident: no anger, just peace and acceptance.
I walked to where I used to live, because I knew that Di and Kostya would probably be there, and I could get wifi on my phone, and sleep on the kitchen floor if I needed. We watched the news, and traded stories, and Skyped my sister until Di saw on TV and pointed out that the lines I needed to get home were running. I thanked them, and walked to the station.
I crammed into the most packed train I'd ever seen. It was the second one to come, I was too far back in the queue for the first. I managed to read a little on the way home, and when I got to Tama-Plaza, I looked around, and feared for my apartment, which isn't very new and not exactly earthquake-proof.
I saw some cracks in the road, but they could have been incidental. When I walked into the house at 1am, I saw that my shelving units were ok, my computer desk and shelves with monitors and speakers and mixers and tape delays were fine. Our rice cooker had fallen from the fridge but had been caught by its cord, my coffee pot was on the floor and the kettle was in the sink. The fridge had shifted a long way. But apart from that, the house was in decent order.
I spoke to my parents and read up on more detailed stories for hours, and finally got to bed at half past three. Aftershocks had been frequent, and at that point at night you could feel them every ten minutes. I was woken by a large one at 4am, and throughout the rest of the morning. After a while, and through sleep-hazed thoughts, they were just nuisances, and I felt like shouting at whoever was doing it to stop. They were no longer things to be feared, they were the ground just trying to wake me up.
School was at 10 as normal, and despite sleeping badly, I went in and gave the children who showed up a great lesson.
I have to give the children a lot of credit for getting me through the ordeal so smoothly. They calmness made it seem a lot less frightening. And they gave me a good reason to stay calm.
The aftershocks continue, and I felt two while typing this. They are, of course smaller, but anything would feel smaller after the first one.
I was only reunited with Alyssa nearly 28 hours after the first shock hit, but that's her story.
This is a long, rambling version of most of the important details, so that everyone can get a detailed account of what it was like for me.
Let us not forget how easy it was for us down in Tokyo, especially for me, with a running train service and nearby friends.
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