2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami

Was visiting a customer and remember trying to figure out how to get home. Eventually walked 3 hours and made it. There were tons of people walking home to all parts of the city.

One thing that sticks out is one provider I know quite well said she spent the night in her room at the shop. She got home on the Namboku Line to northern Tokyo as this was one of the first lines with restored service the next day.

homer69 said:

Was visiting a customer and remember trying to figure out how to get home. Eventually walked 3 hours and made it. There were tons of people walking home to all parts of the city.

One thing that sticks out is one provider I know quite well said she spent the night in her room at the shop. She got home on the Namboku Line to northern Tokyo as this was one of the first lines with restored service the next day.

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Hibiya line didnt stop running!

turboman said:

What happened in your life? How did it affect you?

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I was single at the time and to be honest it made me take a long hard look at myself. Friends and colleagues scrambling to contact loved ones. I didnt really have anyone to call (in japan).

I wasn’t in japan during that time (only came later in 2011) but I was supposed to have an internship in Sendai and had been preparing everything for that and when the earthquake and tsunami happened, I never heard anything again from the company employee stationed in Sendai, that I had talked to.... my coworkers nephew was in Sendai as well but he made it back to Germany in one piece shortly after.

When the Tohoku Earthquake hit I had recently relocated back stateside after my years in Osaka and was still in the "FUCK JAPAN, I'M NOT GOING BACK" phase of my life. Regardless, I was in a section of the western U.S. that scientists initially predicted would be hit hard by the resulting tsunami waves. We all watched the unimaginable damage unfolding live on TV in Japan, the emergency sirens began wailing and the entire population of city promptly began losing its shit. People were flooding Costco, any open market and Home Depot and going absolutely insane. Coastal cities began evacuations. My relatives all live far outside the flood zone so no worries there. I was still single so only myself to worry about. I live at the top of a high rise condo about a hundred meters from the beach and I decided I wasn't going anywhere. I fear looters more than waves. A semi-Doomsday-prepper-loser, I always have enough bottled water and food rations to last quite a while, so instead, I checked on my more important alcohol rations (always keep cases of imported Asahi Super Dry and Costco Vodka in storage), filled my coolers with ice for my cocktails, moved my vehicle into a secured location on a floor higher than any waves will reach then locked down my condo and prepared to barricade my front door.

Swapped out the batteries in the half-dozen emergency flashlights I keep in every room. Oiled up my AR-15 and Glock 19, checked on my weapons lights, checked on my pre-loaded magazines, got out my go-bag and prepared my gun-belt rig in case I had to leave quickly. Put on some comfortable clothes and my G-shock, set my Gore-Tex Merrell hikers by the entry. Charged up my phones. Then fixed a nice stiff drink, grabbed a nice cigar and sat on my balcony to watch the waves coming in and wait for the supposed big ones to arrive.

In the end we got a few waves that reached the main roads and a couple of highways. Minor damage. We got lucky, again. But we're long, long overdue for something big. I just hope I'm in living in the safe, sound suburbs by that time.

I was in Japan. I somehow remember some funny details of that trip to Japan. I flew in Narita from Amsterdam on March 9. In Amsterdam, I spent a fantastic night with a Czech escort. She was just beautiful, and we smoked a lot - of cigarette - together (ah, I was a smoker then) during the play. Before the fight, I bought a few packages of smoked eel at Schiphol. My business partner in Tokyo wanted me to bring them with me. The meeting went well (the eel worked) and was completed by the evening of March 10, Thursday, so I decided to take a day off on that Friday. At midday on March 11, I thought about going to Yoshiwara, but changed my mind at the last moment and decided to visit my friend's house in Tokyo suburb. It was a cold, cloudy day. I was talking with my friend's wife, waiting for my friend's returning from work, when the earthquake hit. It started gently, which we didn't pay much attention at first. After a minute we realized something was wrong as the wobbling didn't stop. It just didn't stop. It lasted a few minutes. Fortunately, no electricity cut in the area I was in, and we could watch TV. All we could see was the tsunami warning. At first, we didn't realize what that was supposed to mean. Then we saw the live-footage of tsunami destroying houses along the Natori River. I thought that I was having a bad dream...

First time in my life I fully understood in a life or death situation most people are not brave. I saw people panic & freeze. I saw people in a split second say fuck all you I’m running off. I saw people get injured from running off even one person sprain their ankle from running down the steps.
There’s no right or wrong and it might just be survival. Hopefully I won’t see something like that again.
I did see people also help each other out emotionally & with goods. I also had friends that said they were staying out only to leave the country or go to Osaka within a few days.

The first thing that struck me (downtown Tokyo) was seeing usually polite and patient Japanese people getting into fist fights over taxicabs as everyone tried to get home - took 6 hours for me to make it home on foot and then went back in the morning to drive Saitama dwelling coworkers who'd spent the night in the office home, and fortunately trains started running in limited capacity before I could go back for a round of Chiba dwellers. It was also the first time to see full on selfish hoarding and panic buying as everyone snapped up every bottle of water they could get their hands on - but also kindness as some of the elderly people in our neighbourhood took that hoarded water and gave it to the families with young children. Damned if any of them would part with so much as a sheet of toilet paper though!

Spent the next year running supplies up north for a dear friend's animal shelter, they were overwhelmed with abandoned animals after the evacuation busses forced people to leave their dogs and cats at the side of the road. The inflow of animals up there didn't slow down for months as they went driving around looking for homeless animals. There were dozens of people donating food and other supplies, and at least 6 of us making biweekly runs up there to transport the stuff, but they were always on the verge of running out of animal feed.... and of course, there was no way for us to arrange to round up the abandoned cattle in the area to feed them either. Fortunately things stabilised after 8 months or so, and supply chains normalised and people could just donate cash for the shelter to buy what they needed. We still made runs up there, but after a while it was less about gettign supplies up, and more to run assorted dogs and cats back to Tokyo as they found foster homes to take care of them.

There's always a program to take care of people, animals need all the help they can get.

That one last night did remind me of 3/11 not just the strength but the fact it felt like the ground was rolling for a goid 2 mins afterwards. Not intense, but just like being on a boat in calm but not totally still water.