My Experience During the Great Japan Earthquake

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First of all, I should mention just how easy I had it. Tokyo, being some distance from the quake epicenter and in no danger of tsunami, was affected on a drastically lower scale than Sendai and the surrounding coastal cities. I consider my story just mild curiosity, combined with the surreality of being in relatively close proximity to an enormous disaster that is still ongoing as I write this on March 14. But I thought people might be interested in what it was like in Tokyo that day.

On Friday March 11, I had a flight scheduled to leave from Narita Airport at 7pm, so I was at Tokyo station burning a little time before getting a train to the airport, having some soba noodles at a cafe on the lower level, when the earthquake struck. At first it seemed only moderate and most people in the cafe didn't even seem to notice or care. After a minute of this though, the shaking became more severe, and then more severe again. People started to go beneath tables and look concerned, which I've never seen from Japanese people in an earthquake before. The lights swung violently and the feeling wasn't really shaking so much as like the whole room being moved from side to side quickly. It went on for about 8 minutes and small aftershocks rolled in almost immediately. It felt much, much more severe than anything I'd experienced growing up in Los Angeles.

Even despite what had just happened, it mostly seemed like people just wanted to get back to what they were doing, which is a kind of matter-of-factness that I tend to think of as very Japanese. The waitress came over to try to explain that the earthquake had shut off the burners in the kitchen, and so they couldn't finish my noodles. But the chef yelled out (I think) that I had ordered cold soba and so he had finished it and the waitress served me my lunch. I figured I might as well eat it, as the aftershocks continued to roll through.

When I went out into the corridor, I made the first of many realizations that day that my situation wasn't as good as I assumed. People were clustered around station monitors, now showing a live feed from Japanese news with a graphic of the country overlaid in one corner, the entire eastern coastline flashing indicating tsunami risk. The only image shown at that point was smoke rising from a building in Tokyo.

I went to the ticket office and found out that no trains were running at all, and people were starting to head for the exits. I figured I still had a few hours before my flight, so an expensive taxi ride might still get me there in time. I went up to the surface to find an ATM and a taxi line. Just as I got outside amidst a gathering group of people spilling out of the station, the largest of the aftershocks hit -- 7.1 I think -- which caused a stir as the buildings of the financial district began to sway visibly and, sickeningly, audibly. Later I had to remind myself that that was an earthquake a small fraction of the main one, and something like 250 miles away from the epicenter.

I got some cash and realized that there was already no such thing as a taxi line shorter than half a city block long, so I picked one in front of a busy financial building where inside tarps and blankets were already being broken out for office workers. I wasn't able to get any calls out, but I had been chatting with Elisa on IM with my iPhone all along, and so she made a couple of calls for me: one to American Airlines who said flights that day were not likely and rebooked me on Saturday's later flight, and then one to the Texas Instruments travel agent who found a hotel with a room available in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo where I usually stay and which has many airport transportation options. This wasn't the last time that I realized that without my iPhone, my circumstances would be very different.

Taxis were coming fairly regularly for a while, then once every 15 minutes or so, then as I got nearly to the front of the line they stopped coming entirely. It looked like they were all being occupied by people calling in pick-ups, not taking street pick-ups. After over 3 hours of waiting, as a cold front rushed in, and getting cold enough in my travel clothes that I was basically willing to sacrifice anything to go inside, I gave up and went into the office building to see if trains had restarted. They clearly hadn't, and on the bottom floor there were people standing in long lines for a small grocery store, for bathrooms, and for public phones. Again people were crowded around a TV screen, now showing the helicopter images of northern Japan being steadily annihilated.

I considered my options and decided that walking was the only sure thing. I found a stall in the bathroom to unpack my luggage, retrieve a couple layers of clothes, and pack my computer bag inside so I had only my rolling suitcase to deal with. I asked google to route me by foot to my hotel, 8km across central Tokyo. I started walking, and quickly discovered that most people had made the same decision.

While I walked, I was checking various news sources on my phone, trying to get a handle on the damage to the north. While transportation had been interrupted in Tokyo, it was nothing compared to the combined quake and tsunami damage to Sendai. Some co-workers at the Japan office who had been just a little bit further north than Tokyo were stranded, without power, at a shelter, although unhurt.

Getting a taxi would likely have been a mixed blessing as traffic was virtually halted on most roads. It was rush hour by that time and thousands of people walked shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalks, sometimes spilling into the outer lanes of the roads, since cars weren't really moving anyway. People entered and left the stream, like a slowed down depiction of the flow on the subway system that these people would normally be using to get home. Again, the matter-of-factness was kind of mind-boggling. There were no other options, and so people just started walking, and doing it in a very orderly, quiet manner. It felt almost normal, as if the subways and trains were just a convenience.

On the way to Shinjuku: More taxi and bus lines, looking much more crowded and no more useful than the one I gave up. Convenience stores in the process of being stripped of prepared foods, and restaurants packed, but unable to have lines out the door because the rush of people didn't allow it. The bridge over Yotsuya train station, crowded with people and showing eerily empty platforms below, reversing the normal state. Large public displays normally showing advertisements or popular TV, showing the NHK news stream. More people camping out in lobbies of businesses along the road, giving up on trying to get home that night.

Foot traffic seemed to be leading predominantly toward Shinjuku, and when I arrived, I saw that people seemed to assume this would be the most likely place to get other transportation -- normally true with a large bus and taxi pickup and dropoff area. Taxi and bus lines all had enormous lines full of people looking like they'd already been waiting a long time.

I got to my hotel, where the lady at the reception desk was a bit surprised to see somebody with a suitcase. Luckily Elisa had gotten me a room before most people realized they weren't going anywhere that night. The huge chandeliers in the lobby of the Hyatt were in the process of being lowered to the floor, and the lobby had been filled with chairs for people waiting to see if they could get rooms later in the evening.

I checked in, dropped my suitcase, got some dinner and went to 7-Eleven for a drink -- and some new underwear since laundry was out of the question. The shelves were stripped of food, and people had started moving on to filling their baskets with beer. I went to my room on the 21st floor, got caught up on things, exchanged email with worried people at TI, and went to bed. I was exhausted, but I was woken up three times in the night by aftershocks over 6.0 magnitude that made the building rock and creak.

In the morning, I checked out and asked about the state of the trains. The main trains weren't running, they said, but a couple of subway lines had limited service. Taxis weren't available. One subway could get me part way to Narita Airport, but I would have to bet on getting a cab at the station to get the rest of the way. I didn't like that option, so I sat down to check the internet for as much state-of-affairs as I could. Planes seemed to be flying, but all road traffic was taking hours to get anywhere. I went back and asked again, and this time they said they could get a taxi, but it would be expensive and very slow -- many hours to Narita. I had 7 hours to get to the airport, so I took it.

The taxi got out of Shinjuku easily and made our way toward Narita. Crossing the Rainbow Bridge, we ran into traffic, which quickly turned into nearly halted gridlock. Twenty minutes of nearly no movement and the taxi driver started poking at his cellphone. A few minutes and he said that he had found out that a few more train lines had opened and that if he took me to a station relatively nearby, I could make it on my own. He found some side streets to get us to the station, and I paid him for the partial ride. He was probably relieved that he wouldn't be stuck way out in Narita at rush hour.

I boarded a train which claimed to go directly to Narita Airport, fairly full of people with suitcases. We got as far as Chiba before stopping and a message was read over the PA that caused the train to empty. I went with the crowd and overheard that the train we were on needed to return to Tokyo and we would have to catch another train. Nearby, multiple idle trains were lined up on side rails.

Our next train was apparently collecting the contents of three trains full of people heading to the airport, and so we all packed in, tighter than even the Tokyo subway at rush hour. That train dumped us at Narita city, not the airport, and so we had the choice of waiting thirty minutes for another JR train, or switching to a Keisei train that came sooner. The crowd headed for the earlier train, but I figured I had enough time to relax a bit and waited for the JR train. But the platform quickly filled up as well and we again packed into a train that got us the rest of the way to the airport.

At the airport, people had clearly been sleeping all over the terminal, reminding me of arriving at Madrid Barajas Airport when it was one of a few airports still open during the Iceland volcano crisis, which I was also lucky enough to be present for.

There was little trouble after that, although our plane was very quickly turned around from a previous flight, which isn't typical for the big 777 flights. We left a couple of hours late.