I should write something, to let whomever reads this know that things are ok. I am just at a bit of a loss for words. What has happened in Japan is horrible. But – things are ok in Tokyo. They are just a tad bit different than usual. Most things are the same as before. In the past couple of days, the Japanese government said that there was a 70% chance of another big quake. When the quake first happened on Friday, I was just happy that nobody I knew had been harmed, and I thought everything would go back to normal. Then the TV images flashed over the screen, tsunami, nuclear disaster, flood, dead bodies … and slowly I slowly started to grasp the magnitude of this catastrophe. The news makes me cringe, I feel for the people who are affected by these events.

That being said, of course things are absolutely horrible for the areas that are affected. No doubt about that. I don’t think that the media can truly report how awful it is for the people who have lost their loved ones and their entire life and all their belongings in this disaster. But – please keep in mind, the media is also trying to sensationalize things all the time. I gave an interview via mail (phones were not working) on Friday for a big newspaper in Norway (about 5 hours after the quake), got on the front page of their internet page. I wrote in my comments via mail to the newspaper that things were calm under the evacuation and that everyone acted professionally. What did the newspaper choose as a headline? “Had to turn around during evacuation because of the smell of gas.” What the newspaper chose as a headline was true, when we were going to a nearby school for evacuation we had to go somewhere else because it did smell like gas. But, the evacuation process was not dramatic at all, and everything was calm and in order. I am not mad at the newspaper at all, of course they have to publish things that sell, but I want all people who are worried sick to take a deep breath, and if you have to worry, worry about the poor people in the areas that were severely affected, not me and not Tokyo. Not now. I am doing fine.

This also goes for the nuclear news. I understand that it seems very very scary, but even if there is a nuclear meltdown, it is not necessarily that dangerous. This was the article that I read that actually gave me some peace of mind.

When it comes to news, I watch NHK in Japanese, and NHK in English.

For those of us living in Tokyo, most things are just like usual, the stores are open, McDonald’s right around the corner from my house is open, Japanese people are calm and quiet like they always are. I went to Shinjuku yesterday to do some shopping, and the only things that were different were minor things. The stores had reduced opening hours. They closed at 17:00 and 18:00 instead of 21:00 and 22:00. All the big billboards have gone black, to save electricity. A great deal of shops have turned off their electric billboard fronts, also to save electricity. When we went to shop for some extra food today, the store still had quite a bit of food. Of course they were running low on certain things, but there was still more than enough food in the store. The lines were incredibly long at the store though, they went all the way to the back of the store, and we probably spent about 30 minutes just standing in line. I think that if this would have been another country such a situation would have created chaos, but Japanese people are absolutely great at standing in line, being patient and staying calm.

The only thing that is very different that has effected me personally to any real extent is that my school decided to close for the rest of the term. They want to make sure the building is ok, and also to be on the safe side because of the potential aftershocks. So all of a sudden I got an unexpected two week vacation, and all the tests that were scheduled are not happening. I feel grateful for my school’s decision, because even though I am fine and everyone around me is fine, it is hard to concentrate and buckle down and focus on studying with everything else going on. I am sitting glued to the news and I am basically very inefficient.

But I am ok.

Trying on some of the clothes I got. Black frock is returned, but I am keeping the shirt 🙂

Trying to take my mind of earthquake-things, so I will post something different. The other day when I came home, there was a present for me.

Inside there were pretty clothes. I might take back the black frock, because it has no shape, but I love the rest of the garments. I am a lucky girl, getting presents at random ♥

This is a video from swaying buildings in Shinjuku. Thank god the buildings are designed to sway, so they will not crumble.

I already wrote a little bit about the earthquake yesterday, and I do not want to turn this into a news-blog, but here are two pictures showing parts of the apartment when I got home about 4 hours after the earthquake. For the most part the things are ok, apart from Broken Riedel champagne glasses, and well, the printer in the picture above was in pieces. Today has been strangely calm, I should keep on studying Japanese for my final tests next week, my school wrote that unless something severe happens, classes will be as usual from Monday.

There are still aftershocks as I type this, and I have been feeling kind of seasick all day. Apparently there have been over 100 aftershocks and I can not tell if the house is shaking most of the time, or if it is just me who is dizzy.

Apart from that they might take away the electricity for a while to save power, so that means no internet for a while. But I have food and water and everything I need, so I am sure things will be ok. I just want things to get back to normal, everything is very quiet and eerie right now. I can not believe all the damage I see on the TV, what Tokyo experienced was nothing compared to all of those poor people further up north. It is just unreal.

There has been a huge earthquake here today. I believe it was 8.8? First of all, I am ok, and everyone I know is ok.

I was at school when it happened. At first when it started both my classmates and me thought it was just good fun. A lot of smaller quakes happen here all the time, so we did not think much of it. However, the quake did not stop, and it just became stronger and stronger, so we followed procedure, opened the windows and went to stand in the doorway and hid under our desks. And the earthquake just continued and continued for several minutes. We have 避難訓練 (Earthquake drill) once every third month, so at least we knew what we had to do and what not to do. Go away from the windows, make sure you are not next to anything that can fall, hide under your desk so you will not get the lamps and roof falling on your head. All that jazz. We then went to be evacuated at a primary school nearby, but it smelled of gas around the school, so we went to Waseda University instead. Everyone was acting calm and everything worked out ok, but this was the first time I have felt truly scared when an earthquake happened here. They are so usual that nobody even reacted when it first started. When we were walking out of our classroom, a wall with mirrors broke right next to my classmates. Everything was shaking and falling down everywhere. When I finally got back to the apartment, there was a lot of broken glass everywhere, but all the important things (Macbook + cameras) are ok. About the tsunami, I am not scared for me personally, because I do not live on the coast, but I am following the updates on the news, and everything just seems a bit unreal at the moment. I am following the NHK news right now, and I hope things will calm down and the worst is over.

But the important part: I am ok. Everyone I know here is ok.

I made a couple of postcards a some years ago, and I found the files again now. Two weeks from now I have a couple of days of from school, and I will spend them drawing and drinking buckets of coffee.

I am completely staling here. I wonder why it is so much easier thinking about the past than making an effort for the future. I guess I am like most other people – making decisions are scary simply because you feel that when you choose that one thing, you close the door on the 99 other things. Taking pictures in Photo Booth seems like far more fun than studying kanji right now. Worst/best part is that I feel like I really want to do something creative, make something, draw something, I feel spring bubbling all around me, but (un)hopefully the guilt of not studying what I am suppose to do will take over. A very random fact: I haven’t been bored since 1999, and I sometimes envy people who say they are bored, because I can not even grasp the concept, there is so much to do, both on the to-do-list and should-do-list. /End procrastination, back to the books.