Smell of Liquor

The morning light coming through the window made me feel less scared, and helped me start thinking about something I couldn’t think about when it was dark --- things like breakfast and my work. It was probably after 7:00 am or later. (I don’t remember exactly, but it is possible that I felt a few aftershocks before I went outside to buy something.)

So how bad was this earthquake after all?
Was it bad enough that I can take a day off from work?
Should I call my office or boss? But they won’t be in the office until 8:30 am or so, so now… what should I do? …. Don’t I need breakfast? It’s darn cold…. Don’t I need a warm drink? Maybe coffee?

Yes, coffee. Maybe I can get a canned coffee from a vending machine.

I kept vocalizing all those thoughts and recording them on the cassette tape, which helped my decision-making. I heard myself talking to the tape, saying something like “OK, I need a hot, canned coffee now. Let’s get out of the room and see the world outside,” and I actually went for it.

There was a small convenience store very close to my place ( apx. 2 minutes on foot). I decided to buy bread or something at the store for breakfast, and hot coffee from the vending machine right outside the store.

When I went down the stairs and stood on the street right outside my aparment, I was stunned. The crashed rice store across the street looked more grotesque in the morning light. There was a thin crack in the ground from right outside of my apartment to the neighboring building. Some electric polls were not standing straight, and my apartment wasn’t either.

It seemed that the convenience store opened at 7:00am just like any other ordinary days, but inside the store, it wasn’t an ordinary day at all. The moment I stepped inside, I felt the strong smell of alcohol. No wonder…. Almost all the bottles of sake, whisky and vodka were broken on the floor and the shopkeeper was cleaning up the broken glass pieces. The manganese dry cells were all gone. So were breads, sandwiches and all other foods you can eat without heating. There were bunch of instant cup noodles left, but how can I eat them when there’s no water, gas and electricity? The shopkeeper told me that people rushed in as soon as the store opened and bought exactly the same thing as I wanted. Looked like everyone was thinking the same way.

I gave up on breads for breakfast, but I did get hot coffee from somewhere. I don’t remember if the vending machine was working at that time, but I do remember drinking hot coffee that morning. Caffeine was always my close friend in the past, and it will be for the rest of my life.

"No Serious Damage"

Maybe this was before I noticed the Kachina doll, I guess…. Before 6:00 AM, I did make a phone call to my parents living in Kochi. Kochi is a prefecture on another island, Shikoku, and rarely hit by earthquakes. I was almost positive that my parents weren’t affected by the quake very much, so I wasn’t worried about them. But I thought they might be worried about me. Oh I have to call them and tell them I’m alright. I heard the phone is usually on even when the power is down, so it should be working now...

What they say about the phone was true. The phone was working at that moment and I was able to talk to my mom. She said in a sleepy voice, “Yeah, we felt the quake a little, but not much. We’re alright.” And she didn’t even ask me if I was alright. At that time, she never ever imagined that we had a bigger quake in Hyogo prefecture. Anyway, I felt some relief, thinking that they won't have to worry about me.

After the phone call…I don’t know how long after… I started checking things out in my room.

Kachina doll wasn’t the only thing that was broke. I found a few glasses and dishes on the kitchen floor, broken into pieces. (Actually, it wasn’t a real kitchen. My apartment room was close to what they call “one-room type” in Japan and it only had a sink and small gas stove in one corner of the living room, near the entrance. I must have walked by those broken dishes when I went outside the room, but I didn’t see them because it was still dark at that time. )

Should I clean the kitchen floor now or is there anything else I should do before that?
WHAT SHOULD I DO NOW?
Should I cry? Should I yell? Should I evacuate? How bad was the quake after all?
I wanted information, more than anything else.

The power was down. No TV. How I wished that I had a transistor radio then! But even if I did, I don’t think the details of the disaster were known at that point. I tried the faucet --- no water came out, which was no surprise to me. I had been told by the landlord that we couldn’t get water when the power was down. There was a device to send water from the water tank on top of our apartment building to each room, and it couldn’t work without electricity, he said.

Not knowing what to do, I was self-talking before I knew it. I was certainly on the edge and almost bursting out.
I need someone to talk to right now!! Otherwise I’ll go crazy!!
I need someone to come knocking on the door and ask me if I was OK,
and give some idea of what to do.
I NEED SOMEONE OR SOMETHING TO HANG ONTO!!
Then an idea came to my mind.

That year, I was still in close touch with my friend “S” who was in the U.S. She was an American, older than I, and we became close friends (at least I thought so) when I was in the U.S. After I came back to Japan, we corresponded with each other not by writing but by sending cassette tapes. We would record our voices on micro cassette tapes and sent them to each other by air mail. So I always kept a micro cassette recorder close to me when I was in my room, and recorded my “voice letter” whenever I felt like it.

It wasn’t difficult to find the cassette recorder on the floor that morning. I grabbed it, pushed the “record” button, and started talking to the small machine, “Hi S! Guess what just happened here…” If someone had seen me then, (s)he must have thought I was crazy. I don’t remember seeing my face in the mirror that morning, but I must have been looking terrible. Anyway, I didn’t know then but when I listened to the tape again before mailing it to S, I was surprised how weak and shaky my voice was.

(BTW, I sent the tape to S, and she mailed it back to me several weeks later. She said, on another tape that was enclosed in the same envelope, “This is something very important to you, so I think you should keep it.” So I have the tape with me now. It is one of these micro cassette tapes, but I can't tell which one because I forgot to put a label on.
The problem is... I don’t have the player any more, and I can’t find one around here. If, someday, I find a player and have a chance to listen to the tape again, I’ll write what I feel then.)

I walked around in my room with the cassette recorder in my hand, telling S everything about my room. I clearly remember kicking the broken dishes/glasses (I had shoes on by then) to make noise so that she could hear. I told her about the power, water and my worry about the gas pipe.

Actually, other than a few plates and glasses broken in the kitchen, there was no serious damage found in my room. My biggest surprise (and relief) was that my microwave oven did not fall on the floor and crash. Instead, my electric rice cooker was on the floor on its side. I told S everything I saw, and repeated over and over “No serious damage” and “I’m OK.” It wasn’t so much for her… it was ME who needed the reassurance over and over.

“No serious damage”
… At that time, I didn’t know it was going to be a curse for me afterwards… and for such a long time.

Broken Kachina

"Total confusion"
"Panic"
I didn’t know what they actually feel like until that morning.

The first thing I tried to do was, if I remembered correctly, getting out of futon looking for my socks. OK, let’s move. Move….why can’t I move my legs? There was something heavy on my legs. I don’t remember if I actually saw it (then where did the light come from?) or just felt it by hands, but anyway, I found that it was my small bookshelf.

When I lived in that apartment, I didn’t have a bed because there was absolutely no space for that in my small room. I would lay out my futon every night, with the headside being close to the bookshelf for my bedtime reading. Once in a while, when I felt like it, I put the pillow on the opposite side just for a change. For some reason, I felt like changing sides the night before, and I was glad that I did. Otherwise it would have been my head that was hit by the bookshelf.

I moved the bookshelf to free my legs and put on my socks that were found in my futon. Should I stay inside or get out of the apartment? WHICH IS SAFER? INSIDE OR OUTSIDE? Seemed like the apartment didn’t collapse, at least, but I had no idea how much damage it got. What are other people in this apartment doing now?

Now I don’t remember exactly which I did first, opening the window to see outside, or getting out of the room to see someone in the same apartment. And at some point, I did turn the gas off at the main, but don’t remember when.

When I tried to open the door chain lock to get outside my room, I found something was wrong…I couldn’t open it. What’s wrong? I tried and tried, but it didn’t work. After trying more than 10 times, I knew it wasn’t the lock…it was me. Somehow my fingers didn’t work. I just couldn’t slide the chain thing to the proper position to unhook it. C’mon, hurry!! What if an aftershock occurs right now!? This apartment won’t survive another quake! I won’t be able to get out and die right here!! I felt as if my heart came up to my throat and started pounding there. It was a feeling that I’ve never ever felt before in my life, PANIC. For several years after that, I had to deal with the flashback of that panicky moment everytime I tried to open a door chain lock.

Somehow I managed to open the door and went to my next-door neighbor’s. I knocked on the door, but no answer. Then I went upstairs. (My apartment was a 3-storied building with 6 rooms and my room was on the 2nd floor.) I HAD TO see someone. The power must have been down at that time, but I clearly remember that the emergency night-light above the stairway was on.

A young woman came out a moment after I knocked on her door. I asked her if she was alright, and she seemed to be puzzled why I was there. She said she was alright, no serious damage in her room, and she didn’t look interested in evacuating at all. Quickly she went back inside after saying to me, “Thanks for coming to check on me.” I was still confused, but my fear was lessened a bit.

When I opened the window of my room to see if anyone’s outside discussing what to do, I didn’t think if it was a dangerous thing to do or not. It could have been a bad idea when it was too dark to check the damage to the window glasses, but I was too confused to think about it. Luckily, the window opened with no problem and I expected to see the rice shop right across the street, as usual. But I didn’t see it. WHAT?! Then I realized that the shop was still there, but got shorter. I vaguely understood something happened to the store, but it was still dark to see the details. (After a while, I thought I heard some voices from the street outside, but I wasn’t sure what was going on. )

I went back to my futon again and sat on the mattress, wearing a heavy jacket and with my legs covered by futon, trying to warm up. So, at least, no one is evacuating from this apartment right now… But does that mean I don’t need to?

As it got lighter outside, an unbelievable scene came into my sight. The rice shop across the street from my apartment was a two-storied house and they ran the rice shop downstairs. But all I saw then was the roof and the upstairs part of the house. Underneath them were the wreckage of the house and a white car, completely crushed!!

NO!! This can't happen!! This is.... this is...
.....too ABNORMAL!!!

Also I began to see the details of what happened in my room. The books from the bookshelf that fell on me were scattered around, and among the books, I found a kachina doll. It was a souvenir I got from the landlady when I was in Phoenix, AZ. She gave it to me so that I could have a safe flight back to Japan. She said the doll would break and save my life when something terrible happens to me. But it was several hours later that I recalled what she said to me about the doll. I just picked up the kachina doll and noticed it was partly broken, then I put it back on the floor again... not knowing what to do with it.

(I fixed the doll with transparent scotch tapes later ... like this.)

The 20 Seconds

I was in a school gym, looking at the new, varnished floor, having nothing particular to do. Then Mr. Yamashita, a gold medalist at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, came in. He was going to coach the judo team of this school today. I couldn’t see his face, but I noticed that he dropped a lit cigarette on the floor. OMG!! I stepped on it right away to put it out. I felt its warmth in the back of my right foot, but when I lifted it up, the cigarette on the floor was still burning. Why?! Why still burning?! The burning end of the cigarette was red… such a bright red color, growing larger and larger…

Someone was shaking me really roughly. I was in futon mattress on the floor in my apartment, awaking from the dream. The next thing I noticed was that no one was shaking me. And it wasn’t only me that was being shaken. The floor, the wall…. NO, THE WHOLE APARTMENT WAS SHAKING!!

It took me a few moments to realize it was an earthquake --- a big one. The whole apartment was making terrible noise. I sat on my futon but couldn’t stand up. It was as if two gigantic hands were shaking the apartment real hard, vertically, just like you do when rinsing an empty PET bottle with water. OK, it’s an earthquake. But it has to end soon. It has to. Now! Right now!! Otherwise this apartment will break down!! NO, IT HAS TO END NOW! NOW!! And still the whole world was shaking. Oh, God! Please!! Stop this! I’ll be good from now!! I won’t do anything bad any more!! So PLEASE!! STOP!! RIGHT NOW!!! I felt my vocal cords vibrating, but couldn’t hear my voice. AM I SCREAMING??!! AM I??!! OH THIS HAS TO STOP NOW!!! NOW!!! RIGHT NOW!!!

After a while, which seemed to be at least more than 5 minutes to me, the shaking began to subside, and finally stopped. (Later I found out that the shaking lasted only for 20 seconds or so.) I was still sitting on the futon mattress. Now what? What do I do? It was pitch dark, and cold, but I had no idea what I could do about them.

At 5:46AM on January 17th, 1995, I was trembling on my futon mattress in my sweatshirts/pants and bare feet, totally at a loss.

It was so dark and cold
So dark and cold
So dark and cold
So dark and cold
So dark and cold
.
.
.
.
.

A Frozen Clock - Memories of the Quake -

*Apologies:

This is my therapy after all, so I’ll probably keep changing and re-writing my posts over and over until I feel satisfied. Never ever expect any objective or intellectual descriptions, because my priority here is on exploring and processing my feelings.

Also, I certainly do NOT intend to give anyone any constructive criticisms at all. It’s just that some things need to be taken out of my system. That's it. Nothing more.
(If I meant this to be a constructive criticism, I’d have had it proofread, at least ; ))

The candles in the photo are from the memorial ceremony in Kobe this year. As the cold rain put out some of the candles in bamboo tubes, always someone came by and lit them again. Again and again and again … so that our prayers won't die.

They never will.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

- The 20 Seconds

- Broken Kachina

- "No Serious Damage"

- Smell of Liquor