Hi all, Denise Marsa here with an e-mail I am going to publish from our CE, Catherine Felegi. Catherine contacted me a few months ago, as she was eager to add more writing to her experiences/resume and I was excited to work with someone who loves and desires to write. I like Catherine’s voice, which is a term I learned when working at McElderry/S&S in children’s books. Though my focus is music…I have also mentored a few young people in other areas…and as my working with Catherine is also in the form of mentoring…I wanted to share her e-mail with you. Since she sent it out to several people…all of whom were very worried…the e-mail came as a relief. She was at work on 3/9/11 and we wished her a safe trip, and warned her about the rumors of a Tsunami. She said she was not going to be near the area. and I gave her some American dollars to bring the office back a treat from Japan. the treat is now her e-mail and knowing she is safe. Imagine a young lady from new jersey travels to japan for the first time and has an experience beyond her wildest imagination. Read about it in her own words…her personal experience of the earth shaking in Japan on 3/11/11. She sent the e-mail on 3/12/11.
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Hi everyone!
So, I’ve been getting worried people on Facebook asking me what happened with the recent earthquake. I’ve decided to send out a mass e-mail to everyone (family, friends, work, etc) to let you all know what happened and to let you know that I am safe.
So, after a 14-hour flight (complete with watching Anjanna Anjanni (a Bollywood movie), Julie and Julia and The Hangover as well as two one-hour long TV shows), Sara’s mom (Mrs. Winters) and I landed in Japan at Narita International Airport. Sara was going to check into the hotel before we arrived, take the train to the airport, meet us by our gate and we would take the train to the hotel all together so we could grab food and call it a night.
Well, obviously, it didn’t happen that way. Mrs. Winters and I got off the plane and were instructed that all foreigners were required to get their fingers printed and a photo taken of them in order to enter the country. Fair enough. While waiting in line to get all this done, there was a low rumbling. At first, I dismissed it as a plane taking off. I’m a Jersey girl, why would an earthquake even enter my mind? Then I remembered Cherry, my co-worker, telling me about an earthquake that had happened the day before in northern Japan and it hit that this wasn’t an airplane. The Japanese were going about like it was business as usual, as though this were a regular occurrence, so we thought nothing of it at first. Then, when the rumbling kept going and got louder, we saw people duck to the floor. Immediately, we did the same, packing tightly together with another random girl who had apparently had never gone through an earthquake either. Once it passed, Mrs. Winters and I stopped a stewardess who laughed it off, telling us it was probably just a 4.0 on the Ritcher scale and that we should expect a small aftershock but nothing big.
We decided to go grab our luggage and head over to our meeting place for Sara, chatting about how scared we were by the earthquake and how we had never felt anything like that before in our lives. While we were waiting by the entrance of the airport, we felt a low rumbling. Not good. Before, we just had to worry about a piece of dry-wall clunking us on the head. Now, we were standing under the arrival and departure sign and were surrounded by windows all over. Some people who worked at the airport told everyone to get outside. Amazingly, everyone was the picturesque description of calm! Very few people were racing to the door. Mostly, everyone went outside and were laughing, taking photos and video of the event and just amazed by how strong the after-shock was. Admittedly, I have some footage of this myself.
The only problem was that Mrs. Winters and I now no longer knew if Sara was around or if she knew how to find us, since security was pushing everyone further and further into the parking lot and away from the building. Mrs. Winters and I were walking up to random Japanese people, asking if we could borrow their phones to call up Sara’s international phone. Most informed us that they would try but the cell phones were down due to the quake. Even the internet was down for quite some time. Finally, we found a woman named Masana. This woman is a SAINT. Not only did she repeatedly attempt to call Sara, she also texted her, e-mailed her and informed us that she would not leave us until Sara, Mrs. Winters and I were all together again.
We got tremor after tremor and, after being outside in the cold for quite some time, we were informed that we could proceed inside at our own risk. The trains were down and the highways were shut down (so no taxi nor bus). We would just have to wait until everything was up and running again. Sara was stuck on the train coming to the airport but she was fine. She was sitting next to a Japanese man coming over and was watching the news for a bit, seeing the damage from the megaquake that hit Japan. We found out later that this was an 8.9 on the Ritcher scale! What hit Narita was only a small taste, that was from an aftershock!
Mrs. Winters, Masana and I were staying in the airport trying to get warm when we saw another obviously American woman walking around, looking a bit panicked. We found out the woman, Maureen, was also suppose to meet her daughter, Megan, at the airport and that Maureen could not get in touch with her daughter due to the quake. It turned out Megan had taken the train and was probably stuck as well, though we weren’t sure. Maureen then introduced us to Peter, an American boy studying in America she randomly met who was meeting his parents at the Narita airport so he could show them around his university and give them a taste of Japanese culture. Instead, his parents flight was re-directed to a different part of Japan to avoid the quake and now, since all transportation systems were down, he was stuck at the airport. We all kind of made an unspoken pact that we would help one another and not leave one another.
I can’t stress enough to you how much of a saint Masana is. She did not complain once about not being able to get her luggage (luggage claim was in the basement, which was closed off until later that night due to safety reasons) and did not mind that the Americans were scrambling over one another, using her phone to call Sara and Megan’s international phones repeatedly, asking for help to text and e-mail and using her Galaxy (think of a Nook or an iPad) to access what little internet signal we picked up to e-mail home and let everyone know that we were safe.
Everyone in the airport was helpful as well. Mrs. Winters and I were constantly trying to find a way to call home and, while the Galaxy could e-mail, it couldn’t access Skype to call home. We jumped from person to person who had a computer out and every time someone had an internet signal, we were told that we could use it to call our loved ones, no questions asked. We all chatted, even when we didn’t understand one another that well, and tried to keep one another’s spirits up and kept telling one another we would get out soon, the trains would start running and the highways would open and this would be nothing.
Well, of course, this isn’t how it ends. The airport workers came onto the PA system (thankfully, Peter speaks fluent Japanese so he and Masana translated everything for us) and told us that they heard rumors of another earthquake, possibly worse than the last one, and we would all have to stay at the airport for the night. The Japanese Red Cross came and handed out sleeping bags, Ritz crackers and blankets for everyone to use to sleep for the night. Masana, Maureen, Peter, Mrs. Winters and I all found an area that we thought was sufficient, though freezing cold, that we would use for the night.
If you know anything about me, you know that I am a busy body who likes to move around both mentally and physically. After five seconds of sitting down, I decided I had to get up and move. The airport, mind you, is nothing like we have at home. It is much smaller, almost like a C-shape. I was able to walk the length of it in ten minutes. Walking back to our little home base, I saw a girl with shocking orange hair bowing, excusing herself to all that past. Sara! She had gotten off the train and hitch-hiked nine hours to the airport to get to us! Needless to say, we were the two girls in the middle of the airport, screaming our heads off that we found one another. I literally grabbed her wrist and ran back to where her mom was to bring her back with her family.
While it was all well and good that we found Sara, we all still had to stay at the airport. Maureen still hadn’t heard a single word back from Megan, though we assured her that her daughter must be fine. Peter was anxious to see his parents but was constantly looking on the brighter side of the situation, constantly laughing. I don’t remember seeing him with a worried look on his face. Masana was rather quiet but she did not seem concerned. The airport opened more of the areas, including the luggage claim, so she was able to get her bags. We re-located our little base upstairs to a much warmer section which was far away from windows, in case we did get another earthquake.
Peter, Masana and I went exploring for most of the night (even though I only got two hours of sleep on the plane over and I slept 3:00 AM – 6:00 AM at the airport, I am still not tired! That’s why I am stealing Sara’s computer to write you this novel of an e-mail!) and, while we were joking around and having fun, we did have quite a few tremors that, at points, had me ready to drop to the ground again. We saw that the television stations were tuned to the news. Peter translated for me, explaining about how the epicenter was in Sendai, which isn’t terribly close to us, fortunately. The New York Times dubbed the quake a megaquake and said that the 8.9 issue was the largest earthquake that Japan had seen in over a century. Tsunamis followed, hitting the city hard. Most of the footage that Americans are seeing, from what I’ve noticed on the internet and what I’m hearing from others, is actually from Sendai, not from Tokyo or Narita. It was quite eerie, combined with the fact that there were 13,000 people at the airport with us stranded because of this quake, a lot of them from other countries who had fortunately buddied up with a Japanese speaker.
By the next morning, we had a bunch more tremors (only one that was apparently severe enough to wake everyone in our group up other than myself and make them consider going outside again. I always knew that I could sleep through an earthquake!) but they had died down to almost nothing. Think about being on a ship and feeling the rocking of the waves. That’s exactly what the tremors felt like from then on in. The trains were still not working. Maureen was stressed she hadn’t heard from Megan yet so Sara decided to give her a call. We reached her! Her train got stuck, much like Sara’s but, instead of allowing the passengers to leave like on Sara’s train, the employees who worked for the train company told everyone that they could leave if they wanted to but it would be best to just bunker down for the night, keep the train doors closed and wait until the morning. Somehow, her train managed to get her to the Narita airport (even though they stopped working again right after? We are still trying to figure this one out) and got her re-united with her mother.
Now, with everyone together, we all agreed that, once the train opened, we would ride it together as far as we could and make sure that everyone was OK. The currency exchange agency opened so I was able to grab some yen, we all ate a hearty breakfast and, by 9:30, we were told we could go on the train and start heading out.
Needless to say, this was all incredibly exciting but, as much as I partially had fun with it, I would not want to do this again. Something about a potential hit in the head by an arrival/departure board just doesn’t seem too appealing to me a second time around. Now, Sara, her mother and I are in Akasura, which is a hop, skip and a jump away from Tokyo (which only got some damage from an aftershock). Peter met up with his parents in Tokyo, Megan and Maureen went straight to their hotel for some much needed rest and Masana headed on home. Fortunately, before we all parted, we exchanged contact information. It only seemed right after surviving an earthquake together.
I should probably get going now. I am playing alarm clock for Sara and Mrs. Winters, since I just can’t seem to sleep! I just thought this was a fun story to tell and I wanted to make sure everyone knew that we were all safe. Thank you everyone for the well wishes and, while I am having fun here, I wouldn’t mind being home where the earth doesn’t move quite as badly!
See you all on the 21st!
-Catherine Felegi
