The Japan Quake (5): The turning point, Ibaraki, and the end

March 14. Our first and last day in Sendai. As mentioned in the previous post, we visited a few places near Sendai city, and caught a glimpse of the devastation. But it was evening before we knew it and it was time to head back to the city centre.

Just outside the City Office, however, we spotted a makeshift stall on the pavement selling miso soup and onigiri (rice balls). Instinctively, we quickly parked the van nearby, and queued up for our first warm meal for a day. They charged just 300 yen for a bowl of soup with two onigiri – quite a bargain in my opinion, given the scale of the disaster just tens of kilometres away. The miso soup was so gratifying that I had a second helping. The onigiri could be kept in my pocket for later, after all.

Then came the time to make the key decision of the trip.

Our drivers had been recalled by their bosses because of radiation fears. An explosion happened at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that afternoon, and it was the third in as many days. We tried to offer them more money, but they insisted this was not a matter of money – we could either go with them, or stay in Sendai and find our own way about.

I would be lying if I said I was fearless of the radiation threat. The possibility of over exposure to radiation was real, and undetectable. The night before I left for Japan, I monitored the news until about 1am in the office, and the last I read, the nuclear situation was fully under control. The next day (March 12), after I landed in Tokyo, I heard news of the first explosion. Then came the next two. Tepco, the company that runs the plant, did not seem to be in control of the situation at all.

But at the same time, we didn’t have anything substantial to show for the trip so far.

In the end, we decided – as a team – to go back to Tokyo.

It was past 2am, March 15 by the time we got to a hotel that had rooms. A quick trip to the convenience store to get some food and water. Never been so glad to enter one, really. Till that day, visiting a convenience store (or Combini) in Japan, to me, was an essential experience, a daily habit for any resident or traveller to this wonderful country. But this time, it was like a step back into sanity, back into a reality I was used to.

Back at the hotel, I took a shower for the first time in three days. Then I spent a couple of hours reading up NHK and other Japanese news sites on the situation in Ibaraki prefecture – the only tsunami-struck prefecture we could go to on a day-trip from Tokyo. I had to make the Ibaraki trip worthwhile, and research was essential. Afraid that I could not wake up in time, I left the lights and TV on.

A couple of hours later, I was up. Ate some bread, and headed downstairs. Our driver was supposed to come at 9am, and he was a little late.

Our first stop was the petrol station. Given the widespread petrol shortages, we were only allowed to buy 2,000 yen’s worth of fuel. But our driver Guo was quick-thinking – when the attendant walked away, he topped up the van’s tank to the maximum, paid up through the machine and quickly drove off. I wasn’t sure how much fuel we actually needed for the day’s drive, but having a full tank was most assuring.

The highway was packed bumper-to-bumper, and after a 30min crawl we realised the reason – they had sealed off the way to Ibaraki for exclusive use by relief vehicles. Guo once again showed some quick-thinking and somehow convinced the officers manning the road block to let us through. I filled up some forms at a table set up on the empty highway, and we received a plate to display at our windscreen, that read 緊急, or emergency.

The trip had up till this point been quite a surreal experience for me, but the journey on the near-empty highway was perhaps the most surreal portion. While I was still gungho about the trip just the day before, my fear of the radiation had escalated to almost hysteria at that point of time. The empty road seemed to suggest we were heading to some sort of suicide mission. Only the banter among the four of us journos kept my tears back, I think. Looking back, the fear was irrational, but what would you feel if you were in my shoes?

Here’s a short clip I shot of the drive:

Our destination was Oarai (大洗), a coastal town near the prefecture capital Miho (水戸). Ibaraki, located more than 100km away from the epicentre, was spared the worst of the tsunami, but there were around 20 deaths. One person died in Oarai. Another city, further north, had over 10 fatalities but I was not confident of getting there given the time we had.

We stopped at a highway kiosk along the way, and I spoke to the people working there. They were indeed afraid of the radiation, but they admitted there was no where they could go anyway. Most of them live nearby.

We arrived at Oarai after 2pm. It was practically a ghost town. I had a lengthy chat with a friendly youth who cycled past me. He is a university student who was visiting his friends around town. He told me of how the 1999 Tokaimura nuclear incident affected him as a primary school kid. (The Tokai plant is about 20km away) The situation in Fukushima, which has invoked memories of that episode, was causing the Oarai residents much anxiety despite assurances from the government that they were too far away from Fukushima to be affected.

This was when I got a call from my boss. The editors have decided to pull us back. Immense relief. But our work was not done yet. We did more interviews at the town, talking to town officials, residents and volunteers. Soon it was dark, and the town folk had left for home. It was about 5pm, and we had to head back to Tokyo. It was well past 8pm by the time we got back to our hotel. We bid farewell to Guo – he was leaving for the safety of Osaka in western Japan with his girlfriend and colleagues that same evening.

The following evening, we flew back to Singapore. I was pleasantly surprised to meet a friend from SMU at Narita airport – she now works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they had flown in to help stranded Singaporeans at the airport. I touched down at Changi at about 1am, March 17.

On hindsight, I would forever question my decision to turn back to Tokyo from Sendai. Because we effectively gave up any chance of landing the stories we were there to get. Such is the cruelty of life. You make a decision and live with whatever regrets it leads to.

It’s been a month since the trip, and my disappointment has somewhat waned. But the question will linger in my mind for a while yet. I will have to make amends to myself, somehow.

Carrots, shoes and cans on the dusty roadside.

A soba shop, now littered with junk.

Some workers helping to tow out a damaged vehicle from a garage. While the damaged from the tsunami was not too drastic in Oarai, the loss of property was still immense.

Taken in my hotel room. Experts appeared on TV every day, giving their own take on the nuclear crisis and relief efforts. All the TV channels devoted their programming to the triple disasters during the time I was in Japan.

At our hotel, but the room service staff would put paper cranes on our beds. It reminded me of the story of Sadako and her 1,000 cranes. May Japan emerge from this current nuclear disaster stronger than ever.

Part 1: It begun at Narita

Part 2: The long ride to Sendai

Part 3: Quiet night in Sendai

Part 4: A glimpse of the devastation

The Japan Quake (4): A glimpse of the devastation

I woke up at 8am the next morning, after a short but much-needed slumber. A little later than I hoped to, and the other three were up already. As it turns out, we couldn’t leave yet. Our drivers, who joined the queue at a petrol kiosk the night before, told us that the kiosk had just opened, and they would probably take a couple of hours before they could fill their tank. It was March 14.

The Chinese reporters told us about a long queue at a bus stop just opposite the town office, so I headed there to take a look. Stepping out into the streets, however, I could scarcely believe that the prefecture had just been hit by one of its worst disasters on record. People were actually heading back to work. I heard that the subway had partially resumed operations.

There was a queue of at least 500 people at the bus stop, by my estimation, and the queue snaked around the small park behind it, and continued on the broad pavement across the road. It turns out that the people there were queuing for a bus to Yamagata prefecture, from which they could then head off to Tokyo and the western cities. (Yamagata, to the south west of Miyagi, was not really affected by the quake.) Many had started queuing early in the morning, and more people were joining the queue by the minute.

After that I headed back to the town office, where I spoke to a young volunteer named Satou about the situation. The 25-year-old told me that he was originally from Yamagata, and his family has already left Sendai. However, his girlfriend was stuck in nearby Tagajo City, and he is staying behind with the hope of meeting her soon. They have been keeping in touch through email.

Soon, it was time to head out. We wanted to move northeast, towards to the worst hit towns of Ishinomaki and Kesennuma.

Our first stop was Sendai’s port, just about 30 min away from the city centre.

There was a sense of foreboding as we approached. We could tell we were entering a place struck by the tsunami, as the roads became sandy. The streets leading into the port – which no doubt would have been bustling on a typical Monday like this in better times – were empty. And we soon started hearing sirens wailing around us, warning of a possible tsunami. Helicopters whizzed over us, repeating the warning over and over again. But we were too starved of good news material to turn around.

Soon, we finally caught our first glimpse of the scale of destruction caused by the tsunami. Cars stacked up on top of one another like toys, broken glass on building facades and rubbish strewn all over the place. It was a thrilling sight, from a journalist’s point of view. Yet it was horrifying at the same time. Our trip has begun.

We stopped by a couple of spots in the port, to look around and take some pictures. I spoke to a manager of a trade promotion company based there. He was there when it happened, and now he is there to pick up the pieces. Yet he was apparently at a loss of where to start, he told me.

The predicted tsunami, by the way, never came.

We continued to head eastward, and reached the town of Tagajo – where Satou’s girlfriend is stuck at. We delved into a residential area, where many residents are left stranded without food, water and electricity. I lent my phone to a woman standing outside a ravaged Lawson convenience store, who lived in Tagajo alone and had not been able to make calls to her family. She seemed terribly distraught. Her call was not picked up, unfortunately, but she left a voice message. I hope she eventually managed to get in touch.

I also spoke to an elderly man, who lives in a two-storey house with his wife. He was trying to clear up the rubbish in his front yard when I walked by, and his car was wedged diagonally in his tiny garage. He is luckier than the woman I had met earlier, because he is not alone. Further, one of his children had driven all the way up from Chiba prefecture (that’s where Narita airport is) to look for him immediately after the quake. His grand daughter and her husband, who live in Miyagi, have been visiting him and bringing him supplies.

We soon hit a roadblock, literally. The road eastward was closed off by the police. And because of the limited fuel, the drivers refused to take any detours. So we settled on heading westward, towards a fishing village that the Hong Kong journalists had told us about – Yuriage.

We never reached there, however. Our final stop of the day was Wakabayashi ward, in south-east Sendai. This was the place where 200 to 300 bodies were reportedly found on the day of the tsunami. I remembered it clearly because I spotted the news flash on Yomiuri Shimbun that evening.

Police officers were standing guard at the main entrance, and I tried to talk to people who were trying to get in. Some of them were residents, while others have friends who lived inside. An elderly woman came back, hoping to see her house before she left with her son to Gifu prefecture. An old man was there, trying to see if he could get in and confirm if his colleague was killed by the tsunami. But all were refused entry. Apparently almost all the residents have been evacuated to shelters nearby.

We later headed to the nearest shelter, a school gym, hoping to talk to some refugees. Unfortunately, we were quickly spotted by volunteer staff, who insisted that we seek permission from the person in charge. I obliged, but our request was turned down. It was almost 5pm by then, and we had to head back to the Sendai City office.

Cars stacked up at Sendai’s port. We were quite excited when we first saw this, but scenes like this proved later all too common in the coastal areas struck by the tsunami.

We bumped into some TV crew from the UK’s Sky TV at Sendai port. There was a tsunami warning just a while before this (helicopters wailing above us and all), and they were waiting to film the advance of the water. The tsunami never came and the warning was later lifted.

A gym bench washed out into the open. At Sendai port.

The playground of angry waters. Taken at Sendai port.

An ill-fated drive to the neighbourhood Lawson store? In Tagajo City.

Kids salvaging games and porn dvds at the neighbourhood Games/Video store in Tagajo City.

A photo booth in a residential neighbourhood in Tagajo City.

A Wii Fit board lying outside the games store.

A sofa lodged on the edge of a rice field, in Wakabayashi ward, Sendai.

Part 1: It begun at Narita 

Part 2: The long ride to Sendai

Part 3: Quiet night in Sendai

Part 5: The turning point, Ibaraki and the end