“OMG is everyone okay? (Tokyo ppl) That was probably the strongest earthquake I have ever been in. Thankfully I am okay.”
While I was at work, finishing up lesson plans for the upcoming Monday lesson, this was the second tweet to come up from my friend living in Tokyo. The one before was a full 140 characters of curses. Right away, I knew two things. One, something BIG had happened in Japan. Two, at least one of my friends was okay.
Over the span of the following hours, I was glued to my twitter feed, my facebook, and the internet, relaying the information to my friend who was visiting from Japan. At first, we were told it was a 7.9 earthquake, which is still absolutely massive, and it sent us both into a panic. Despite being in Korea now, I lived in Japan for over 16 months, and most of my friends still live there, so I was really worried.
As the news continued to come in, it was painting a picture that became worse and worse. 7.9 became 8, then 8.9, then eventually became 9. An earthquake became a tsunami, which became a shut down nuclear power plant. Then a failing nuclear power plant. Every time we felt like we had a moment to breathe, something worse would happen. For my friend and I, the worst place we could be was sitting a sea away, not being able to SEE the devastation, but to just depend on others to let us know what was going on.
It wasn’t the news that helped me. CNN and BBC did little to reassure me. On the contrary, they taped a horrible disaster and put it on rerun for days and days. I couldn’t bear to watch the news until five days later, and even then, I watched the Japanese news network, thinking it would be easier to watch. Instead, it was more heart breaking, seeing stories about entire elementary schools left empty because the earthquake evacuation left the students in the soccer field when the tsunami hit. The whole school was considered missing the last I saw of that story.
Instead, I depended on Twitter and Facebook. Within the hour, I knew that most of my friends on Twitter were okay, because they tweeted something along the lines of “That was the scariest earthquake I’d ever been in.” Because of my friends on Twitter, I learnt that Tokyo was relatively okay, although quite shaken. Because of Facebook, I was able to confirm that every person I knew was safe within 24 hours of the earthquake. I saw messages of every language bouncing around the internet, telling people where to go for bathrooms, running water, shelter, warnings, food, and help. As day turned to night, we began to worry about our friends on their long walk home from work without the trains.However, the tweets became more steady, thanks to the cell phone internet service still being up, despite the phone lines being clogged up.
Even a week later, I’m still reeling at the news, feeling completely helpless. Despite my friends reassuring me that they’re fine, and as much as I try to ignore the sensationalized news, I can’t help but be overwhelmed with grief for the country I still consider one of my homes. But, if any country can pull out of this mess, it’s Japan. Ganbatte, Nippon (Good luck, Japan.)
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Just a reminder, cards will be sold for another 24 hours at my previous post. 100% of the proceeds will be going to the Red Cross Japan relief effort!