August 19, 2011. What a crazy day.
Around 8 (which is a real late start
for us) I started putting my shoes on while still kind of
dreary-eyed. After I got the first one on I went to put my second
boot on, I saw this guy just in time to avoid squashing him with my
foot.
It started off simple enough. We
finally got a house to work on that is less than two hours away from
where we live. It is literally 5 minutes from us. Its an old
traditional style Japanese home. The homeowners have lived in it for
generations and have farmed rice on the land across the street.
The architecture is amazing and there
is a cave cut out of the rock behind the house. It is quite possibly
the coolest house I’ve ever been in. And I have been given the task
of repairing it from the tsunami damage! To top it all off there is
no ceiling work and very little wallboard to replace. It looks like
a simple enough case of cleaning it up and putting down some
insulation and new floors.
The homeowner is a delightful lady who
shares it with her husband and mother. This afternoon, as our
manager and interpreter were off buying supplies and looking at new
houses to work on she came in with another lady and two children.
Since were all still pretty new at Japanese and they knew no English,
it took us about 20 minutes, two English-Japanese dictionaries and a
lot of roaring laughter to finally figure out what we had all
suspected. It was her mother, her daughter and two of her
grandchildren. Four generations had come to see what we were doing!
Suddenly our laughter and lighthearted
moods were interrupted by a pretty large earthquake. It turns out it
was a 6.5M quake and it was within 50 miles of us. I guess at this
point earthquakes don’t really bother me. It was at least the third
quake in the sixes I can remember and I’ve slept through several more
in that range. What was frighteningly different was this was the
first one I have been around Japanese people for.
Once it really started shaking I looked
at the homeowner. Her face which just seconds ago was filled with
laughter to the point of crying now held a look that will forever be
burned into my mind. It was a look of pure terror. Words cannot
describe it. Then the screaming started.
As it turns out Brian had been
videotaping the whole thing due to the hilarity of our communication
difficulties. I started watching it tonight, but I had to shut it
off because of the bone chilling screams. Its all just a bit too
real, so I won’t be sharing it with the world. I’m not even sure if I
will finish watching it.
After the house finally stopped moving,
the daughter and grand kids quickly ran off with terrified looks on
their faces. The lady just stood outside for a second and then
started saying something to us in Japanese. After few stressful
moments of back and forth trying to figure out if we should head to
high ground, she finally just ran inside and flipped on the TV.
Of course it was all still in Japanese,
but I saw a map of Japan with the coast surrounding us highlighted in
yellow and .5M written next to it. Tsunami warning. A few seconds
later the PA system fired up and more talking in Japanese. I picked
up my cell phone and attempted to get a hold of our interpreter, but
time after time all I got was more messages in Japanese. I finally
got a hold of him as his van was pulling up to the house.
Finally the message was communicated
that we needed to get grandma out of the house and all get to high
ground. So the homeowner went looking for grandma. She found her
mom but she was in the bathroom and when she opened the door to tell
her we were leaving grandma just laughed. Seems like everyone has
different reactions to stress. As we helped her out of the house and
into the van she just kept laughing and was in good spirits the whole
time.
It was really nice to have some
laughter among all the chaos.
We drove to the top of a nearby hill
and parked next to a cemetery. It was there that she told us that
helicopters picked them up from this very spot on March 11 because
the were surrounded by water. Awesome. Just then several
helicopters began to circle the area overhead.
It was a surreal moment for me just
like some scene from any action movie ever made. There I was
standing next to a graveyard in the midst of terrified people,
helicopters overhead and no real idea what was coming or when as we
could not see the ocean from where we were standing. We were told
tsunamis take between 5 and 20 minutes after the quake to hit land.
I did the only useful thing I could
think of, pray. Eventually I got the rest of the SP people rounded up
and our client, who judging by the alters and idols in her house is
clearly not a Christian decided to join our circle and pray with us.
After I finished she looked me in the eye and said thank you. It
looked like the fear had gone away, or at least she could hide it
better.
Eventually, the lady came back on the
PA and announced it was safe, so we returned to work. After having
internal debates as to whether we should continue working after the
terrible emotional distress the clients had gone though, we decided
to keep working.
A few seconds later here comes our lady
with some kind of treat for us. The best description I can give with
words was a fish-cookie. Only it was much better than what a cookie
that smells and tastes vaguely of fish sounds like on a blog. So we
busted our dictionaries back out and Sherry found the phrase “that
was a feast” in her dictionary. Well that got her laughing again.
I added “tasty dish” and she started howling. We laughed for
probably 5 minutes straight.
An hour or so later we headed out and
had a few more laughs as I tried to say see ya tomorrow and she tried
to make sure we had all our tools. In the end we just called an
interpreter and got that message the easy way.
I guess this was just a tiny glimpse into March 11, but I am continuously amazed at the
Japanese people and their mix of determination, patience, hard work,
and sense of humor it really is a remarkable place.
