3.11 And Ten Years After (Part 1)

It has been ten years today since the Great East Japan Earthquake, this March 11th.

A decade ago, I would not even imagine living outside of Japan speaking in English, being strongly against (also yet familiar with) Japanese politics and toxic cultures, becoming a software programmer, and all the things I have experienced.

As a person who was born and raised in Tokyo, natural disasters were not something in a movie but something I lived with. Typhoons came to the island every summer, some parts of the country sunk after that sometimes with a landslide, cities easily went outage after one night of snow, and frequent earthquakes shook us almost every month.

But the earthquake was something different. It also shook countless people's lives including mine. 

Tokyo was not the epicenter, but we still had endured a magnitude of a bit more than 5. I was in the middle of a rehearsal of my graduation concert in a music college and I saw those big suspended speakers shaken like a clock pendulum.

People were gathered in the main room and staff were running around. We had just been told that a big earthquake hit the east coast of Japan. Social media was not as active as nowadays and I did not really realize how serious it was at that moment. All public transportations had stopped and every road was completely packed by a car. 

Luckily, I had been taking my motorcycle to college, so I could go through between cars and back home. Other students stayed on campus overnight.

I saw the news at home. I saw lots of fire in the city and other parts of the country. I saw the tsunami wiping out port cities. I saw the nuclear power plant making smoke for a while... and then, I saw it explode.

It was so surreal that I almost could not believe any of it. It did not feel real to me. But it was real.

School announced that our graduation was going to be without the ceremony. I just received a certificate by mail. Every event was cancelled for a while.

A lot of rumour and conspiracy emerged on the web. Some said that it was all in the government's plan. Some said a specific ethnic group went crazy and robbed people. It was the time I felt the riskiness of the internet under emergency. At the same time, it was the internet that made me connected with friends to show our care and encourage each other.

The exploded plant erupted radioactivity into the air and sea. it contaminated the entire northeast coast and quickly reached Tokyo. People were afraid of course. I was too. I did not know what to believe. we all stopped buying any foods that came from close to the epicenter.

And even though I had zero percent of interest in politics, the government's move was way too slow and inconsistent. I started to question politics in the country and my suspicion just got deeper overtime with inefficient majors and inadequate support. Since then, Japanese politics never recovered but went worse with the new ruling party which took over the government at the time. There are too many things to accuse of the party in this article. Search Abe and LDP if you are interested.

But what made me sick the most was the people in the country who did not care and overlook our politics and the disastrous situation after the earthquake. I assume it is a mix of the culture of Japan to overlook things that cause trouble and some kind of self-defence. 

People were trying to retrieve their lives before the earthquake and trying not to face the reality that there were so many irrational problems caused by the earthquake and the government's correspondence. There were millions of people evacuated from their lost homes and living in temporary housing without support for example.

I started being very aware of the downside of the country after all and frequently disgusted by it. 

At the same time, I also needed to live my life. I was hired by a music company a year after being a freelance composer and an ambient music artist/violin player. The company had many independent music labels that I was a fan of and all the work was truly stimulating. I met my music gods and sometimes even worked with them. I listened to many new songs and discovered countless music genres.

Although I was extremely happy with what I was doing at the time, I barely lived my life with a heavy workload and extremely low pay. I am still not sure if the work condition was legal but it was not a rare case in the working culture in the country. Once, I found myself too tired that I was sleeping in the bath and simultaneously standing up to take a shower.

I decided to take a distance from the profession when the left side of my face muscle started twitching and never stopped. 
It also was the time I lost my tolerance with blindly peaceful Japanese people and conservative, prewar regressive government. We were still dripping radioactivity into the ocean.

So I decided to move away from my country once and took a flight to unknown North American land, Canada.

It had been five years since the earthquake happened.