The firm sent me home on Tuesday.
I am home, safe and sound, and was at work in one of the California offices of the firm on Wednesday. My trip was cut short for a few reasons. With mounting concern over the nuclear situation, diminishing availability of food and services in Tokyo, and the absence of client work, it made sense for me to return to the states. My family and friends are relieved. I, on the other hand, have mixed feelings.
Of course, I was happy to get my first full night of sleep in about five days. There were hundreds of aftershocks and, with all of the conflicting information regarding the nuclear situation, it had been hard to sleep through the night. Having said that, things in Tokyo were really not bad at all as compared to the northern and coastal areas.
Don’t get me wrong, I am immensely grateful to be safe and happy to have made it out on a flight on Tuesday evening before the foreigners started to rush the airport. The firm told me to head home Tuesday at about 1pm. I immediately got on the phone with the airline while clearing out the office, took a 30 minute subway ride back to the apartment, and frantically packed most of my things in about 15-20 minutes. Singapore airlines had seats available on a 6:30pm flight on Tuesday, but there were no available seats on Wednesday so it seemed prudent to rush to make the Tuesday flight. As it turned out, it wasn’t too difficult to find a cab (we had heard that the Airport Limousine–really a bus–wasn’t running, I’m not sure if that was true), but the ride cost upwards of $200. It took just a little longer than the 90 minutes it had taken to travel the same distance a couple of weeks before. The traffic was not bad. At the airport, the lines were long and the lounges were crowded, but people were calm and orderly. And that is how I said goodbye to Tokyo.
I loved the parts of Tokyo that I saw and the character of its people. I liked the Tokyo office–both the people and the work–and was looking forward to a long stay. And I would like (very much) to return in the future.
Regretfully, I didn’t take a single picture before the earthquake struck, I didn’t see the cherry blossoms, and I didn’t see any neighborhoods outside of Roppongi (where my apartment was situated), Shibuya (where I visited on my first day that I didn’t work while in Tokyo, March 12th), and the Tokyo station area. I am disappointed that I didn’t get to use the ticket to the ballet that I bought just minutes before I was told it was time to leave the country. I also regret that I wasn’t able to get more work experience. But these things are trivial in light of my tremendous good fortune of finding myself safe and sound even as I was leaving Tokyo in a hurry. Countless others, as we have all seen in the news coverage, were not so lucky.
I am grateful for my safety and that of my co-workers. I am grateful for the opportunity to be out of harm’s way. But I wish there was something else that I could have done (in addition to making a donation to the relief effort). Ultimately, I realize that the most helpful thing I could have done is exactly what I did: get out of town so no one need worry about where I was at and how I was managing. It also seems helpful that by leaving the country I have stopped consuming resources that the Japanese people truly need at this time.
Here’s hoping that things start turning around quickly for Japan.
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