The tsunami is what FUBAR'd the shit out of everything.
It will take a long time to recover from, and after a couple of days I started to realize this. I'm very slow to realize things that don't coincide with my version of a happy shiny universe.
I had enough food and juice, after the doomquake and tsunami, to survive on my own for a couple of days. Then I met up with my friend and fellow ALT, Scott, who had no power or water as well, but still had gas and was able to cook. So I took my frozen dinners over there and we would eat those.
Another friend and fellow ALT, David, who lived right next door to me, also had access to food, and we were able to share and ration.
I was convinced we would be all right for the next few days.
On the Monday after, our friend Kevin rode his bike out from Sendai and met up with us, bringing the first word we'd had on the rest of our friends, and our panicking families. Kevin was headed to Ishinomaki to search for his girlfriend, because there was no way for people in our area to communicate with the rest of the world. The phones and internet were all down, and the entire country was worried about their loved ones. Hell the whole world was worried.
He took our picture to send back along with the note that we were alive.
My father had actually contacted the local news people and sent them after me. It was a big shit storm of scary that I did not want to deal with, but I tried my hardest to find a way to communicate to him that I was well and simply incommunicado. I was hoping he would wait patiently for word. My father, however, is as equally stubborn as I am, and waits for nothing.
So Tuesday Kevin gets back to my apartment with a news van, and tells me that if I go with them to Sendai and Skype my father on live television, they'll take me to Sendai, let me shower, and feed me. It was the shower that sold me.
I hadn't bathed in five days and was starting to consider drowning myself in the ocean.
The news people, ABC News' Good Morning America, were really nice, and didn't say anything about me stinking up their van for the ride in. They gave me a hotel room for two nights, and let me shower first thing.
I will forever love them.
The Skype interview--and I had warned them, don't mistake that--did not go as their producers had probably planned/hoped for. Because my family doesn't do melodramatic waterworks. At all. And I'm simply me, and generally incapable of taking things seriously. I also did not want to be on TV, and can be fantastically passive aggressive when I want to be.
Stubborn, remember.
So I felt bad for them, both for that, and for being rushed back by their bosses immediately after because the power plant was exploding and they didn't want to become radioactive mutant zombies of doom.
I suppose I can understand that.
Though a radioactive mutant zombie of doom apocalypse would be just about the most awesome thing to ever awesome, should it happen. I'm totally ready for it.
Anyway. I spent my two nights in the hotel, talked to my family and friends and publishing people, reassured everything that I was alive and well and healthy-ish--though the coughing fits I would get into did little to convince them that last bit was truth--but that I had limited access to things such as power and internet, and would only be able to communicate intermittently.
My family had wanted me to get the news people to fly me home, but I wasn't packed or ready to go. I mean, I charged through a tsunami to save my cell phone, I wasn't going to leave my entire apartment behind just because of an exploding nuclear power plant.
Please.
But my family continued to sell me out to the media.
I got a call early the next morning from 60 Minutes, which I ignored, and then called my family before heading out to do things like find food and my friends. My family called 60 Minutes back and told them exactly where to find me. I was still in my pajamas when they knocked on my hotel door.
I love my family.
I told you we were a stubborn bunch. They were determined to get me out of Japan right the hell now, and I was determined to do things at my own pace.
Obviously I won.
But because they started crying and I can't really deal with that, I agreed to take the 60 Minutes crew around Higashimatsushima and tell them what was what. I also sold them David, because his story was much more powerful and heroic and interesting than mine, and I knew they would like him more.
He thanked me for that profusely. I think he's still killing me in effigy.
But I got more food out of it, so I don't mind.
This was his school:
To get an idea of what he went through, because he was there when it happened. This was the staffroom:
My junior high school looks like this:
Thursday I got a ride back to my apartment, where I continued to pack my things and get ready to fly home. Having seen that even in Sendai there wasn't much power and there were lines for the grocery stores, and that nothing else was open at all, I realized that Japan would not be recovering any time soon in my area.
Another couple of days and my cell phone was able to send emails again, and I began corresponding with my company and my embassy.
They were very helpful. I think they were either all in the same building, or they were reading from the same playbook, because this was what I got from both of them:
"Hang in there!"
Exactly that.
Yeah.
I realized that I would probably be on my own for getting myself the hell out of dodge.
My friend Scott is British, and his embassy sent a damn car for him.
To be fair, though, I did have opportunities to leave. The news people offered to take my luggage to Sendai for me, the military offered to fly me to Tokyo and evacuate me--flying out of the country would have to be paid for by me though. Because the US can spend its tax dollars to send government officials to Fiji and buy them high dollar prostitutes that let them put it anywhere, but it evidently won't fork out the cash to get its own citizens out of a disaster area.
I refused all of these though, because I like to do things at my own pace, even if it means becoming a radioactive mutant zombie of doom myself.
I would be the most scary ninja doom zombie ever though, bet your ass.
Even if it also means running out of food, which I did. I lived on rice for about a week, and then nothing but a bottle of highly sugared coffee and some tea one day. A local PTA lady gave me some food--the rice--and helped me get my stuff out of my apartment. She's been the one taking care of me in Japan, for the most part, like a host mother that I don't live with. My neighbors also came and gave me some food and water and money when everything first happened. After a while though I was on my own, because things started to get scarce.
I eventually made my way by bus to Sendai, and stayed with wonderful friends that fed me. I never realized how much I loved food, until I suddenly didn't have it anymore. Going to bed hungry is something that happens when you're seven and you piss your parents off before dinner, not something you experience for a week because there's actually nothing to eat. It really makes you stop and think, and realize this hunger thing, real hunger, not "oh my tummy's grumbly I'm hungry" hunger. Real hunger is umpleasant and painful, and if anything could make a soulless sack of meat that only cares about belongings cry, that very nearly did. And that is all I will say about it, because it's something I prefer not to think about.
I will mention that there are several families in the disaster areas sharing a biscuit among four people, and while the government and Red Cross are doing their best, they could use help. Don't be an asshole, donate something. It will give you good karma.
Now I'm making my way to Tokyo tomorrow (I hope), and will fly out soon after that.
Unless the nuclear power plant explodes and the zombie apocalypse occurs. In which case, well, I will be an excited freaking cactus.
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