I was standing in front of the two-burner stove, cooking our lunch. I don't remember what I was preparing that day, probably my daughter's favorite meal of udon noodles with vegetables. While I cooked, my two-year-old daughter played next to me on the floor of the kitchen. The refrigerator was just her height, and she was making a game out of opening and closing the refrigerator door, delighting when the light turned on so that she could peer in at the pile of kale, cabbage, and root vegetables that a local farmer had just delivered to our apartment.
The room started swaying. I grabbed my daughter and clung to the doorway between the kitchen and living room as the entire building moved slowly up and down as if it were a boat riding long swells. The small earthquake lasted only half a minute and caused no damage.
It was the first of several quakes that we experienced in our three months in Japan in the spring and early summer of 1998, an expected part of life for people living on the island nation riding the fault-ridden "Ring of Fire."
My husband, who had been driving to work, called me from his cell phone to make sure we were OK. He felt the ground swaying, the telephone poles buffeted as if by a brief, strong breeze. But other than traffic stopping momentarily on the two-lane highway beside acres of rice fields, life went on.
We lived in Mito, a bustling city about 75 miles northeast of Tokyo and near the epicenter of the recent devastating earthquake. Anxiety about a potential earthquake became a constant background buzz in our thoughts, just as it was for our Japanese neighbors and for our Southern California neighbors back home.
But that anxiety didn't stop us from exploring. Three times a week my daughter and I biked to the International Center and took a language class. After my husband came home from work, we walked to
Kairakuen Park and admired the plum blossoms. In the evenings we jogged along
Lake Senba and on weekends rode in the swan boats.
Further afield, we stayed at a European-style ryokan (with the perfect Japanese-style bath) in Nikko. My daughter dashed, wet and laughing, down the hallway from the bathroom back to our room as we chased her in our cotton robes. We cleansed our hands at temples on forested hillsides and in urban parks. We walked the ancient, winding lanes of Kyoto. We stayed overnight at a monastery, strolling through the peaceful grounds in the morning rain. We went to a spring plum festival, an apple blossom festival, a rice festival, a Children's Day festival with
koinobori floating across a wooden bridge.
One weekend we drove north up the coast, along a winding highway south of Sendai with rugged cliffs and towering pines that reminded us of Northern California. We hiked through the forest to the cliff edge and watched the Pacific waves battering the shore. We had hoped to go to the Tsunami Museum in Karakuwa, but we ran out of time. Today that area is horribly altered by the earthqake and tsunami, its land still flooded and homes and lives destroyed.
As I watched images of the earthquake and the resulting tsunami sweeping cars, boats, and buildings away, I remembered the faces of friends I had made in that short, sweet time in Japan and prayed that they were all right.
In one photograph I saw the face of an older woman, her expression of shock and resignation at yet another tragedy. And I remembered the red
daruma doll heads that are sold at Buddhist temples in Japan, symbols of perseverance and good luck. The dolls are weighted at the bottom so that they always right themselves when tipped over. They embody the phrase, "Seven Times Down, Eight Times Up."
A continent and an ocean away now, I'm sending prayers for my friends as they pick themselves up yet again, as they salvage what they can and rebuild their lives.
**Thank you,
Joanie, for inspiring me to sit down and commit this post to electronic type. I have been writing and rewriting in my head for the last few days as my anxiety grows. Your beautiful post on your
California earthquake experience gave me the push I needed to connect with what I was feeling and share it.
