En français
So many people around have so many questions about the Earthquake. Some are far away from Japan and only see the damage caused on TV and get scared about what is going on around here. So I guess I should actually write something about what happened to me the past few days. My experience of the Earthquake wasn't terrible, so I hope people are going to be reassured a bit reading this.
When the Earthquake started I was in Haneda airport. It started to shake and it was getting bigger every minutes and was a lot longer than the little Earthquake I experienced previously. Feeling an Earthquake is not so bad actually. You are just shaken. I was looking around and seeing lamps and shelves shaking until someone told us to get on the floor and protect our heads under the sits. We stayed like this until the end of the shaking and then sat on the floor laughing. I wasn't laughing of relieve for being ok, I think I didn't really realized the danger, because I was ok and everybody around was ok too. I guess it stroke me only when my friend panicked and started to try to call everybody to see if they were ok. I'm not really good at panicking, I'm not really good at seeing the bad things that can happen actually. I guess I just takes the problems when they happen, maybe that's why.
Then we started to walk around to go shopping because we didn't really have anything else to do but the airport life was dead. We ended up on the floor a bit again because of the Earthquake replicas, but still then there was nothing too bad. The phones wouldn't work, they were giving information about the buses and trains that were not functioning anymore. Then the planes started to work and my friend went to take his and I tried to find a way back to Chofu but there was no use. So I had to prepare to spend the night at the airport. At that moment I kind of felt really weird. Everybody seemed to be talking about the Earthquake, the way to go home, contacting families, walking around to get food and drinks and I just sad on the floor to read and write about something totally different. I don't know why I'm like this, it's not that I don't care, just if there is nothing I can really do to help I guess I just go back to my normal self and do my normal stuff. They started to give blankets but I didn't go get one, I think that because there is not enough, it's better to leave them to other people with kids or something, also it wasn't that cold and I had my coat and stuff. But in the end a guy came to give me his because he was trying to get a taxi. I wasn't the only one without but he gave it to me, even though I'm not Japanese or anything.
Then I tried to get electricity for my computer and that was kind hard but soon I started to get organize with some other people and we managed to get recharge of battery for everybody around. I don't know why I got to tell people where to plug things, I mean they weren't my things or anything, just it happened that way. And people coming to me to talk about the Earthquake and to see if I had internet but I couldn't manage to get it.
I managed to sleep for few hours anyway. I was really dead tired. Then it was time to go back and I tried the buses first, some where running but not mine, so I had to take the train. There was a huge queue and some kind of traffic started to get organized to tell us when to go and stuff. That was really impressive how so many people could actually work together.
I took the monorail to go to the loop in Hamamatsusho, the loop was supposed to be running but it didn't really. After waiting 2 hours in a train that was supposed not even to take me the all way, I got pissed and I decided to walk those three stations . At first I wanted to go to Shinagawa but there the station was really full and it was difficult to get in so I continued to walk to Ōsaki which was actually genius idea as from there I could just take one train after the other to get back to Chofu. When I arrived I just had a good shower and slept for 18hours.
Here are some pictures of my sightseeing on the way back.
Travel table of content
