My apartment is only about a block from the school, so I was unsurprised to find it in much the same state as the staff room. My crockery cabinet, which always sways and rattles alarmingly in even the mildest tremor, was mercifully still upright, although it had migrated a few feet into the middle of the kitchen. I had to shove it aside in order to get into the apartment proper. It has sliding rather than swing doors, but even so at least one teacup had fallen out and shattered on the floor, so I was glad that I'd left my hard-soled slippers within easy reach of the door. Taking stock of the apartment was a short if rather depressing task. My rice cooker had fallen onto the floor, but the electric water carafe, which I'd been most worried about, was still sitting on the table by the fridge. Neither the table nor the fridge were quite where I'd left them, mind you. I made a mental note to look into getting proper metal brackets for my furniture. Most of my spices had fallen into the sink, but the dishes which I'd left piled therein were undamaged. Given the flimsy nature of the cabinet doors above the sink, I was rather surprised than only a frying pan and an egg beater had fallen out. The bottom of the (cast iron) frying pan was now distorted by a rather impressive dent. Moving into the living room, the TV set had fallen off its shelf and was lying face down on the floor by the kotatsu table. In its passage it had evidently caught the small glass bowl which I'd left on the table, as there were shards of glass scattered about. The DVD player was nowhere to be seen; I eventually found it between the TV stand and the wall. Most of the paperbacks at the top of my bookshelf were on the floor, along with an appalling mess of papers, souvenirs, CDs, stationary and other assorted detritus. The bookshelf itself was still in place, and the heavier books which I'd (clearly foresightedly) placed on the bottom shelves appeared undisturbed. Both my potted plants had been upended, and the sliding balcony door had come unlatched and slid partially open. No broken windows, fortunately. No power either, of course, and the apartment was rather chilly (about 10 degrees). Mercifully, the water was still running; I ran the tap for several moments to clear the pipes out, and gave the toilet an experimental flush: no problems there. Just as heartening was the fact that the gas was working. I filled up the kettle and started some water boiling on the gas range; if nothing else, I figured it might warm the place up marginally. Unfortunately, my water heater is electronically operated (even though it uses gas to actually heat the water), so without power I had no hot water except what I could boil on the stove. It was approaching five o'clock by this time. Calculating that I had only about half an hour of useable daylight left, I concentrated my efforts on cleaning up the broken glass and china, and making sure I could actually move about the place unhindered. Noticeable aftershocks continued to rumble through periodically. I was somewhat unnerved to realize after a while that the continuous rattling of the china cabinet was not caused by me moving about; rather, it was an indication that the ground was actually trembling non-stop, if only imperceptibly. Food was a bit of a worry. I had very little in stock except some dry pasta (but no sauce), some raw rice which I knew from experience was getting too old to be palatable, and some microwave spaghetti in the freezer (but no working microwave, of course). On the bright side, there wasn't much in the fridge that I had to worry about spoiling (not that it was much warmer outside the fridge than it would normally have been inside it). I remembered from the great Ontario blackout of several years earlier that even a half-full freezer would probably be OK for about a day, just in case I was worried about the ice cream (which I wasn't, particularly). As the light faded, with no sign of power being restored, I began to worry about staying warm overnight as well. My normal covers are sufficiently high-quality to keep me comfortable even in single-digit room temperatures, but the weather indicator on my cell phone was forecasting an overnight low of minus one. Presumably it wouldn't get quite that cold inside my apartment (although, like most older Japanese buildings, it lacks insulation), but it promised to be a pretty uncomfortable night regardless. As I pondered this and other things, a couple of coworkers from the board of education office knocked on my door. After politely enquiring as to the state of my apartment and person, they suggested that I might go over to the evacuation shelter at the municipal health centre, which had both food and heat. It was certainly a tempting offer, and I promised to consider it. By the time they left it was too dark to do anything useful. I crawled under a pile of blankets and did some reading by torchlight. My new Kobo e-reader, fortunately, had remained undisturbed on the bookshelf where I'd left it; I scanned through its list of preloaded titles, settled on a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories which I hadn't read, and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. The continuous rattling of the crockery was rather distracting, and several more aftershocks (some of them quite alarming) rolled through as well. After an hour or so I gave up, and turned my thoughts to the question of dinner. Realizing that I wasn't going to do any better with what I had at home, I decided to take up the earlier offer and head over to the health centre. The municipal health centre is modern one-story building with a communal kitchen and several multi-purpose activity rooms. All of these had been pressed into service. The main assembly hall, as I'd noted before, had been converted into the town's emergency coordination headquarters. Potato soup and rice balls were being prepared in the kitchen, and served to an assortment of people gathered around a kerosene heater in the adjoining room. This last was my destination, and after accepting some soup I found a niche against one wall and settled in to wait (with Sherlock Holmes for company) in vague hopes of the power being restored some time soon. Alas, it was not to be. Nobody in the room seemed to know exactly what the situation was. An old woman came in at one point and mumbled to any who'd listen that SHE'd heard it would take two or three days to restore power. On the other hand, the lady next to me reported that power was already back on in Fukushima City, barely 20km to the northwest. Eventually, one of the people in charge entered and announced that the power company "was working hard" to restore power, but as far as the time was concerned there was no estimate available. It seemed that the transmission lines from Haramachi town on the coast (whence our power originates, apparently) were down. Fukushima City was unaffected, since its power comes in from somewhere else entirely. I eventually concluded that I was in for a night without power wherever I chose to spend it. After mentally weighing the merits of a proper bed versus those of a (reasonably) warm room, I decided that warmth won out. I scurried back to my apartment, grabbed my thermal camping sleeping bag along with a thick blanket to lie on, rather hastily brushed my teeth, then returned to the health centre for a restless night on the rice mat floor. [Concluded in Part 3]