Friday, March 11th was graduation day at the local junior high school where I teach, here in rural Fukushima Prefecture. The graduation ceremony took up the bulk of the morning, after which the graduating students filed out of the school through a double-line of their juniors, and thence out into the wide world (or at least home with their parents). The remaining students stayed around for a while to clean up the gymnasium before being set loose in time for a late lunch. My fellow teachers and I eventually sat down for our own lunch shortly before two o'clock. By half past, an air of serenity had settled over the staff room, and the school was unusually quiet. I'd just made myself some coffee and started working away on my laptop when the peaceful atmosphere was broken rather unexpectedly by a soft alarm noise which I didn't recognize. Several of the other teachers looked somewhat baffled as well; after a moment's puzzlement, somebody identified it as an earthquake indicator. I was a bit surprised, as I'd experienced plenty of earthquakes without ever hearing such an alarm before. After perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, the ground began shaking gently, and one or two staff nodded in satisfaction. "Yes, that was it. Here it comes." What started out as a mild tremor increased in intensity quite suddenly, and everybody leapt out of their seats. One of the teachers hurried to open the window door onto the ground; others opened the various other doors leading out of the staff room. I hurried over to the nearest door in order to assist, although I was too late to be of any help. The shaking was quite alarming by the time I reached the doorway, however, so I braced myself in the doorframe whilst looking around to see what everyone else was doing. There was a cabinet for mugs and teacups just inside the door (facing away from me) which was swaying rather alarmingly; I instinctively put one hand on its side to brace it as I held onto the doorframe with the other. With the shaking now getting frighteningly powerful, everybody began to exit hurridly; one of the other teachers advised me to get outside as he went by my (now rather flimsy-seeming) doorframe, and I didn't hesitate to concur. Rather than go back into the staff room (past the now dangerously animated cabinet), I ducked into the hallway and out the nearby school entrance, and thence onto the school ground with the other staff. Over the past year, the (old and slightly run-down) school has been undergoing extensive renovations to render it more earthquake-proof. This has basically involved knocking out and rebuilding all of the outside walls with new materials (and fitting certain areas with what appear to be specially hinged braces); all the classrooms were moved around periodically in order to keep the students clear of the work areas. The whole process was now virtually finished; only the interior of one end of the school was still being worked on. Clearly, this investment paid off rather sooner than anyone expected. As we watched, we could see the whole school swaying. The building consists of three sections joined above the ground floor by bridges. The point where the closest bridge joins the main building was flexing visibly, giving the impression that the school was actually coming apart at the seams. (In reality, of course, it must be specifically designed to do this.) After three and a half years in Japan, I'd grown pretty blasé about earthquakes. This, however, was something on a new level entirely. It felt like nothing so much as trying to stand upright in an airplane which was flying through severe turbulance. But what was most alarming was the sheer duration of the thing. In my experience, an earthquake which lasts more than about 30 seconds is an unusually long one. I didn't time this one but I estimated later that it couldn't have been less than four minutes. (Later media reports would put it at five.) When the shaking eventually subsided, we made our way, gingerly and with trepidation, back into the school. It looked as though a typhoon had blown through the staff room: papers, books, and various effects were scattered all over the floor. Drawers and cupboards were hanging open. The cabinet I'd previously been so worried about was still standing, but several cups and mugs had fallen out, with predictable results. A box full of basketballs that was kept on top of some filing cabinets had upended its contents. Much of my coffee had, not surprisingly, ended up all over my desk. It had, luckily, avoided my laptop (I hadn't had time to close the lid). Even more fortunately from my point of view was that most of the books and papers that ended up absorbing the coffee were those of my neighbouring teacher, who has the bad habit of piling his things onto the edge of my desk when I'm not around, and then forgetting to remove them. Justice of a sort, I suppose. After some poking around, somebody remembered to try turning on the television for information (all schools are required to have them, for this very purpose). On attempting this, however, we discovered that the power was out. Fortunately, this being Japan, several of us had digital TVs built into our cell phones. Somebody presently set up a portable radio as well, and we kept an ear on the news as we set to work. We spent the next hour or so mopping, picking, and sweeping up the assorted detritus in the staff room, a process interrupted four or five times by aftershocks which sent us all scrambling outside again. Eventually, the principal, who seemed to take great relish in donning his white official "emergency" baseball cap, called the staff together and ordered a full inspection of the school. Each floor would be inspected by the teachers whose classrooms were on that floor. I joined in the inspection of the ground floor, which houses the staff room, administrative offices, infirmary, changing rooms and the classrooms for special needs students. We quickly found that the earthquake had been curiously selective. Despite the mess in the staff room, a large number of erratically piled boxes balanced on a counter in another room had remained apparently undisturbed. Several students' indoor shoes had flown out of their storage compartments, and yet a vase full of flowers was still standing placidly on someone's desk. Besides the mess, there was no real damage in evidence. Some drywall had acquired a new crack or two, and the plastic cover had fallen off a pipe in one of the washrooms, but my team, at least, did not find anything more serious. During this time, more information began to trickle in through our impromptu cell-phone-and-radio news feed. Even with my limited Japanese I was able pick up on some disturbing details. A seven-metre tsunami reported on parts of the coast. Sendai Airport flooded. A fire in Chiba Prefecture. I was particularly unnerved to hear that Kessenuma, a lovely coastal town near Sendai with a hot springs resort that I've twice stayed at, was close to the epicentre. Beyond these fragments, however, I had little sense of how serious the earthquake had been. I could guess that it was pretty major, given the rattling that we, a couple of hundred kilometres from the epicentre and in a fairly stable mountainous region, had received. And I knew that a seven- metre tsunami was definitely bad news, no matter how prepared Japan might be. I was also worried about my students. While the junior high school students had all gone home, I teach English at all the local elementary schools as well. Friday was a normal school elementary school day, and the quake would have struck during afternoon classes. However, in contrast to the rather elderly junior high schools, most of the elementary schools are housed in very modern buildings, which was some reassurance. Shortly after four, the principal told the staff to leave the rest of the cleanup for another day, and go home to face whatever awaited them there. Anxious for news, I headed over to the town hall where my official workplace, the school board education office, is located. On arriving, however, I found the main entrance shut. A few people were darting in and out of some of the side doors, but a staffer informed me that the school board staff had moved over to the nearby municipal health centre. I headed over there. The health centre was, I discovered, the designated evacuation site for the neighbourhood. The main meeting room seemed to have been transformed into an emergency command centre of some sort. My section chief was there, among several others, but I quickly realized that I was superfluous. With no further excuse for procrastination, I headed back to my apartment to see what awaited me there. [Continued in Part 2]