Returning

I'm sorry that it took a major disaster to get me blogging again, but here I am, mostly for my own sake, to get all my fears off my chest, to calm the panic, to share what's going on here in Tokyo.

The funny thing is that A, R, and I were all out of the country when the earthquake struck. A was in the US on a business trip. R and I were overseas, visiting my parents. Unfortunately, we were all scheduled to fly back the following day. A part of me hoped Narita Airport would stay closed, forcing all of us to stay away. It didn't. So here we are, back in Japan, four days later.

We actually arrived Saturday afternoon, our two flights close enough in time for A and I to meet at Narita and attempt to return to our apartment together. As soon as I called A from my cell phone after getting off the plane, and he explained the transportation situation, that's when the doubts started coming. The trains--really, the only decent way to get to and from the airport--had all stopped after the quake and many of them were still not running. Schedules were completely thrown to the wind. The only ones functioning were the local trains, which would stop at every single station. It could take hours--hours of standing, changing trains, waiting for new ones--to get home. And we happened to have a two year old with us, one who hadn't slept a wink on the plane and was already letting me know matter-of-factly that she was well and done with all this traveling business. I've bitched and moaned about it countless times, but never had the distance from Narita to Tokyo seemed so far as it did that night.

It was getting late, R was getting ornerier, and we finally got off the train, caught a taxi to Makuhari--a neighborhood near Disneyland--and checked into a hotel. It turned out to be an interesting stay. Makuhari is one of the newer residential areas, built on a landfill--not the most stable place to be during an earthquake. Although the proof of that wasn't clear until we woke up the next morning and took a walk down the street. Many of the sidewalks had actually buckled and cracked, and huge pools of mud had seeped through the cracks to cover entire sections of walkways and roads. And we were in Tokyo, which had supposedly been spared the full force of the quake.

I also saw, in a nearby neighborhood, people lining up for water.

Luckily, the trains we needed to get home were up and running, and we made it in about two hours. Even luckier, our apartment survived the 5.0 earthquake with only a single casualty: an overturned potted plant.

Unfortunately, the situation at the nuclear plant as well as the threat of additional earthquakes still hang over our heads, making the overall atmosphere tense. Well, I for one am feeling tense. And as selfish as this sounds, a part of me regrets returning to Japan. Yes, my husband is here, my home is here, but all I can think about right now is R. All my protective mom instincts are telling me that I should never have brought her back here. She's only two and doesn't have a clue what's happening, what could still happen. If it were just me, I would have come back to Japan and A without hesitation. But now I'm scared. I wonder, if there's another big earthquake, if everything comes crashing down and the streets are impassable, how am I going to get her to safety? How am I going to keep her safe and warm and clean and dry and not hurt, not hungry, not thirsty, not terrified?

The people in Sendai and the surrounding areas are the ones suffering right now and in desperate need of aid. I know I should be getting my act together and doing all I can to help. I know that.