二番 Niban

Fictional Names of real people:

Mimi: Head Teacher

Yoda: Kids' Head Teacher

Gaijin Guy: Other foreign teacher (and that makes me Gaijin Girl, technically)

Meowmy: Assistant Manager (this comes from an inside joke about a completely different person with the same name)

Lady Student: Self-Explanatory

Mainly, these names are similar to the originals because I'm crap at keeping things straight.

Like I mentioned in the previous post, I wasn't entirely enthused about the week of work ahead of me--after arriving at 5 a.m. in Tokyo, I would start work at 12--followed by a 6 day work week (as I was scheduled for Sunday Open; every so often, one teacher will have extra classes on a Sunday). Still, I felt like I had planned well--I slept fairly well on the plane, then went home for a brief nap, and I was pretty successful. I actually managed to have an international plane excursion without getting jet-lagged.

Still, I was relieved when Friday rolled around with a light load. I usually have 7 classes on Thursday, followed by an easy Friday, though lately I've had classes piling on. I was originally supposed to have 6 classes, but my private lesson at 2 cancelled, which meant that I had an office hour followed by a lunch hour. As it turned out, all of us teachers had a prep class that hour, and we only had one student doing a brief counseling with our assistant manager.

I was alone in the office when I felt the shaking, though it wasn't major at first. I even stepped into the counter area of our lobby (or rather, the door frame of it--I know my earthquake safety tips) and asked, "Is this an earthquake?" Gaijin Guy semi-shouted, "Yes, it is!" at which point the shaking seemed to amplify, and my impression was that it was as if someone had actually turned up the volume dial--and suddenly, Yoda took off outside; immediately, Gaijin Guy vaults over the counter (which is at least 4 1/2 feet tall), and the rest of us followed down the 3 flights of stairs. Outside, many more people were poring onto the street, and we moved further down near a parking lot. I looked up and realized some kind of water tower next to an apartment was gushing water. The ground was still shaking, and I remember thinking, "What is this?" Actually, with my paranoid mind, I began to sensationalize that this had to be more than an earthquake, and I was certain there was going to be some kind of alien attack or something (I have a very active imagination! It can be a good thing sometimes!).

Finally, the ground seemed to hold still, and we meandered around for a few minutes before heading back inside. Only a few minutes later, however, the ground began heaving about again, and we once more resumed the flight down the stairs. We did this up-and-down the stairs dance a few times before we finally realized that the ground was probably going to have the wiggles for awhile, and we decided to just ride it out by staying put in the school. Mimi read a news bulletin about a tsunami warning, and I started to freak out--the way she phrased it made it sound like it could hit us, and there was nothing we could do about it. Once she clarified about the location, I calmed down a bit.

About 15 minutes or so after the earthquake, Yoda and Gaijin Guy (GG from this point out; not to be confused with Gossip Girl) went out to lunch, and I decided to try and get a spare key made during my lunch break.

As I walked outside, I began to realize some of the more unpredictable effects of the earthquake. For example, the Pachinko parlour near the station had emptied out, and the pavilion outside was crowded with people who looked like they don't usually come out in the light of day (for those of you who don't know: Pachinko is this weird gambling type game that is insanely popular with the gambling addicted of people in Japan). Besides that crowd, there was actually a large amount of people milling around the station in general, and I realized that the trains had stopped running; as the ground was still shaking every so often, I decided to skip the key making and just panic-bought candy instead. This was a good call, because candy is always a good call.

Back at the office, I relayed the news of the stopped trains, and on the inside, I was gleefully realizing that classes would probably be cancelled for the day, since students wouldn't be able to get there. Not long after this thought, we got the official call that classes were cancelled--though that didn't stop a lot of students from trying. The mother of my student from my next class of the day rushed in to apologize for her daughter's absence, as she was stuck at her school--an interesting gesture that struck me as completely Japanese. We waited around for a few hours before I got restless and said I was going home. I let my coworkers know they were welcome to come to my place if the trains weren't running; my main reason for leaving before everyone else was that I wanted to clean my apartment, because I thought that having guests would be a real possibility. However, after a little debate between Mimi and Yoda (of which I was updated on via Facebook), they decided to walk home--a journey that took Mimi at least 3 hours. After I began hearing others' experiences, I realized that this was quite a common thread--I had one student in her 70s who walked 15 km home after the earthquake. Another common situation was sleeping at the office--the majority of my salarymen students did this, as well as Hera and her coworkers.

That night, a friend convinced me to go buy supplies, and as I walked around my city, I couldn't help but look at the people around me and think, "We all have this in common. We all have the same thing on our minds right now." It was a strange experience; the last time I remembered feeling that way was on September 11th--you think, "Things are different now," but you can't really predict how.

But I did predict that I would have the day off on Saturday, and I figured that meant one thing: sleepover!