As I said in the last post, many people have clubbed together to do their own little bit for those most affected by the quake and tsunami. Famous people from all over the world are helping too. Some have been finding ways to raise cash, such as Yoshiki of X Japan fame who sold his piano and Eiji Kawashima who auctioned off his Asian Cup winning gloves. Others have simply offered words of encouragement, such as Tom Cruise’s mate, Ken Watanabe and all the F1 drivers.

Shiina Ringo, a woman I am in complete and utter awe of, chose to do what she does best, sing a song. With Tokyo Jihen she covered an old song from the 60s called Yoake no Uta (Daybreak Song). As with most things she does, I instantly fell in love with it. I tried to find a translation but my googling skills failed me, upon looking at the Japanese lyrics however I noticed that the song is actually very simple. So I got out my dictionary and thought I would have a go at translating it myself.

——

夜明けのうたよ
yoake no uta yo
Oh Daybreak Song,

私の心の きのうの悲しみ 流しておくれ
watashi no kokoro no  kinou no kanashimi  nagashiteokure
Wash away yesterday’s sadness from my heart.

夜明けのうたよ
yoake no uta yo
Oh Daybreak Song,

私の心に 若い力を満たしておくれ
watashi no kokoro ni  wakai chikara wo mitashideokure
Fill my heart with the vigour of youth.

夜明けのうたよ
yoake no uta yo
Oh Daybreak Song,

私の心の あふれる想いを 判っておくれ
watashi no kokoro no afureru omoi wo   wakatteokure
Flood my mind with understanding.

夜明けのうたよ
yoake no uta yo
Oh Daybreak Song,

私の心に おおきな望みを 抱かせておくれ
watashi no kokoro ni  ookina nozomi wo   dakaseteokure
Grant my biggest wish and inspire me.

夜明けのうたよ
yoake no uta yo
Oh Daybreak Song,

私の心の 小さな倖せ 守っておくれ
watashi no kokoro no  chisana shiawase  mamotteokure
Protect the small amount of happiness in my heart.

夜明けのうたよ
yoake no uta yo
Oh Daybreak Song,

私の心に 思い出させる ふるさとの空
watashi no kokoro ni  omoidasaseru  furusato no sora
You remind me of the sky of my birthplace.

After the movie was uploaded on YouTube Ringo posted this message on her official website:

Born in 1978, I’d never heard this song sung, not even once. But the music was in a songbook I looked at constantly when I was young. At my house we were only allowed to play out loud for a short time, so I ended up spending much more time just silently looking at the notes. There was a kind of great sadness I went through until I remembered this song buried deep in my memory.

I just now performed the song with my friends. But really, I would like everyone to sing it quietly to themselves. As a prayer to the people who tragically lost their lives. And with the greatest respect for the two wonderful songwriters who secretly gave all of us living today this gift.

(I was going to try and translate this message myself but it turned out that the
official website had already done it, so I used that translation instead, sorry Ringo)

Translating things is really hard. I’m not sure about much of this and took a few liberties. If anyone disagrees with the translation I posted here or has suggestions feel free to correct me in the comments, this is all a big learning expirience.

Oh and just in case, this song was by Izumi Taku and Tokiko Iwatani and performed by Tokyo Jihen. It is copyright whoever copyrighted it.

On the Sunday immediately following the biggest earthquake to ever hit Japan things seemed to be getting back to normal in Tokyo. The trains were running on time again and people were going about their business. While Tokyo and Yokohama had received quite a shake, there was very little permanent damage done to any of the buildings around here and we all counted ourselves very lucky.

Over the course of Sunday afternoon it became very clear that the situation developing at the Fukushima Daiichi was very serious indeed. Cutting a long story short, due to combined earthquake and tsunami damage this thing was pumping radiation out into the atmosphere. Almost immediately people living 20km around the nuclear power plant were evacuated. This led to many people wondering if the radiation would reach Tokyo in harmful levels. This spooked almost everybody and many people began to leave Tokyo for other cities in Japan or out of the country altogether.

As a result of the crisis at the power plant, suddenly the whole of the eastern side was seriously short on power. To combat this, the government announced widespread rolling blackouts and trains would begin running at a reduced rate all beginning on Monday.

On Monday I had to go to work.

This proved impossible as the trains where not running and so began a fruitless morning trying to contact my company for some kind of advice. This proved difficult because they were struggling to deal with everything too. Eventually an email did the rounds instructing us to go to our schools if we could make it to the door. Thus a stressful week ensued, I would have to wake up and the crack of dawn, check if the trains were available to get me to school and at least half way back again. It feels like I have done more walking these past few weeks than I have in a lifetime. Once at work I would try to entertain the kids and then trudge off home to be rewarded with a power cut when I finally arrived home. It also didn’t help that people had begun panic buying and hoarding of food. All to the back drop of the increasing problems in Fukushima.

Finally, on Tuesday, the board of education for Yokohama, possibly fearing liability for any complications that may result from all this, cancelled all assignments and effectively began the spring holidays early. This was a huge relief for me because it meant that I no longer had the extra travel stress to worry about. By this point I had read up a huge amount about the dangers of radiation and come to the conclusion (along with advice from the British embassy) that I was in no threat from the radiation. All I had to worry about now was the aftershocks.

Still the ground beneath our feet was disgruntled and perhaps once an hour there would be a mini tremor of some kind, all at various strengths. As I didn’t need to work any more, I decided to take a long weekend break to Kobe. The Kobe break was all very pleasant.

This leads me to the situation today, as I write this the status of the power plant appears to be improving. Despite this, levels of radiation unsafe to infants has been found in Tokyo’s water supply (which has since gone down). Aftershocks are still happening, usually in the morning so they replace the need for an alarm clock. News has come that the blackouts may continue until the end of summer and beyond. I recently collected iodine pills (just in case) from the embassy. Crucially though, news has also come in that the death toll in the north of the country has now exceeded 10,000 people.

Everything that has happened to me has been a mere inconvenience compared with what some people are going through. My heart goes out to them.

Barring any more crazy things happening normal service here on this blog will soon be resumed. Stay tuned for more trivial but fun thoughts from me from the land of the rising sun. A land which finally seems to be waking up to a new dawn.

So there I was teaching my elementary school class about what a brown bear looks at when suddenly I was interrupted be some shaking of the ground and an announcement over the tannoy system telling the kids to get under their desks. The kids did this pretty quickly, a couple thought this would be a great occasion for a chat before getting shouted down by the home room teacher.

This process has happened a couple of times before, once for a minor quake, another for a drill, so I didn’t think too much of it. After about a minute it became clear that the ground wasn’t going to stop moving so I thought that was a good time to dive under the desk at the front of the class. I’m not sure how long I spent under there but as the stuff hanging from the walls began to fall down around me and the kids gave the odd shout all I could think of was how the earthquake simulation machine in London’s Natural History Museum had got the feeling of a quake spot on.

Eventually the quake died down and the kids all got up from under their desks and put their seat cushions on their heads. After this everyone filed to the playground and the whole thing appeared to be a bit like a fire drill from my youth. All the classes lined up while teachers took the register. What shocked me was that the kids were so calm about it all, I guess that they are well prepared for the situation. Eventually we were let back into the school and in the hall returning to class the first of many aftershocks took place, everyone was sitting on the floor quietly, for some reason there was a fish tank on a desk in the hall, I thought it best to hold on to it to stop it from falling.

So school was now officially finished for the day, parents had begun to gather at the gate and the kids could go home. I returned to the staff room and began to watch the footage of the tsunami on the TV, which was horrible, seeing live pictures seemed to make it even more real.

After sending a few messages out and about to my family and friends, my thoughts began to wonder to how I would get home. I work fairly far away from my home and we had received word that all the trains were out of action for the foreseeable future. Leaving the warmth of the staffroom at about 4.30 I noticed that the school had minimal damage, plaster from the walls and ceiling had fallen down in places and cracks had appeared in the walls. While walking to the train station I began to realise that all of the buildings around me had not suffered any lasting damage.

At the train station, it became apparent that the trains were not going to start up again for a while. I tried waiting for a taxi but none came and tried to work out a bus route using my phone but it was very difficult to sort out all the information and the bus signs were all in Japanese. So I had no option but to wait.

Fast forward an hour or so and we were finally able to get back on the trains. They ran them super slowly and only as far as the next main station. At this point I decided to get some dinner and try to chill out a bit. Later it seemed  like the trains would not start up again for a while so I decided to walk, there was nothing else I could think of doing. I followed other people in the vague direction of Seya, the road filled with cars and my journey was lit up by beacons of convenience stores, Japan’s backbone, amazingly still open and serving people.

Not properly knowing the area, I managed to walk passed Seya and ended up in Yamato after a couple of hours. I decided to wait for a cab from here but found a very large queue of like minded people had formed. I waited for a total of 2 and a half hours and was kind of shocked that nobody asked where anyone else was going. Rather than try to make groups of people heading in the same direction, people were entering the cabs individually and because taxis were only arriving once every 20 minutes or so, I thought this was a wee bit off.

After those 2 and a half hours of waiting I was still ten or so people away from the front of the queue but thankfully a man from the station let us know that the trains would be up and running soon. So I got on the train and waited.

I finally returned home at 12.30 am, about 8 hours after I left work.

Of course, this is nothing compared with what has happened to people in the north of the country, I’ve heard some terrible stories and seen some terrible pictures, I hope I can find some way to help them soon.

When I got home though, I felt like it would all be over for me. However continued aftershocks, problems with a nuclear power plant and power issues are causing stress. On Sunday it seemed like things were getting back to normal for the area but it proved to be a false dawn.

At the time of writing trains are not running to conserve power and while the schools are opening in the mornings, it is impossible for me to get to work. There will be scheduled 3 hour rolling power cuts starting from today, the first of these did not materialise however and the power company say they cannot say until a short time before they are scheduled whether they will take place or not.

I must say at this point that twitter has been amazing for getting news in English about what has been going on. The likes of @makiwi and @timeouttokyo have been brilliant getting information out to people. Reports say that there is a 70% chance of a large aftershock of about magnitude 7 happening in the next couple of days. I guess that nobody knows what will happen in the short term, everyone here is just taking it 1 day at a time.

This week Japan has been rocked by 3 earthquakes. It’s all rather strange, I hadn’t felt an earthquake all year and then, rather like buses, 3 come along at once.

Being from England, where earthquakes aren’t exactly common, I’ve found them to be confusing things. First things start shaking left-to-right, then you start to wonder when it will end and then it finishes. That’s been my experience with quakes so far. Granted the most powerful I have experienced (and hopefully ever will) is a 6 or 7 which is not as powerful as it sounds.

I have also noticed that Japanese people are kind of blasé about earthquakes. Having the ground move below me still puts me on edge and grabs my attention but to the Japanese (well the kids at least) things carry on as normal. Once during a lesson with young 3-4 year olds, I was barking my instructions for them to colour the tomato yellow or whatever when a quake struck. I stopped in mid sentence and stayed still and silent during the swaying. After, I looked back down to 3 bored faces staring at me with “wtf is he so worried about” expressions.

It seems that the people of Tokyo are more worried when it snows than when the ground starts moving. Maybe that’s because it snows far less in Tokyo than it shakes. Also if the ground is slippery and wet, you may just fall over.