3/11 From Afar: My Experience in Tokyo

On the day of the earthquake, I sat in my 3rd-grade science class in downtown Tokyo, unaware of both what was going on, as well as what would happen in the after the first set of tremors. Though our location was far from the actual epicenter, the tremors were some of the strongest of my friends, and I had ever felt. However like most children, we lacked any means to communicate with the outside world, so we remained unaware of the much more devastating damage occurring in Tohoku. As I lived close enough to school, I was able to walk home despite the packed highways and stopped trains, so I could follow all that was happening on TV. All the events, the tsunamis, nuclear meltdown, and evacuation seemed too intense to be happening, I - and probably most people in Japan - couldn't imagine such devastation in a Japan I'd always associated with safety and normalcy. The next day, I remember riding my bike around my usually busy residential neighborhood, but all the cars and pedestrians that usually packed the streets were now empty. If overnight, the bustling international community had seemingly packed up and left, I wondered what the scenes in Tohoku must have been like. Though I was too young to mobilize on my own, the spirit that surrounded supporting Tohoku was something I'd never seen before, and this culture of disaster resiliency and rebuilding has remained a characteristic that I will always proudly associate with Japan and Japanese culture.