11th March in Japan

Thursday I get a call. It was the other Japanese TV company I applied to work for last autumn. The big time, central London one.

Things aren't working out with the guy they hired. They're looking for someone, again. They don't want to go through the recruitment process again. Did I want to put myself back in contention for the job? A whole new direction opens up, but I have plans til September, and then I'll be training to be a teacher. It's a done deal. I've handed in my notice at my current, less impressive Japanese TV job, and I'll finally be shaking Japan out of my system- nearly 2 years after I left, and a lot longer after most of my foreign friends in Japan have come back and moved on.

Back in the interview for the big time time job, they caught me out with a yorker in the general knowledge quiz. Who's the Prime Minister of Japan? I didn't know. 'There have been so many changes recently, I've lost track', I answered. 6 months on and I think everyone is aware who Naoto Kan is. Some footage has surfaced very recently of the Japanese Prime Minister in a Parliament session the moment the earthquake hit on Friday:



What's terrifying about this footage is that he does nothing. Of course, there is nothing he could do, except look around and hope it ended soon.

Friday morning I woke up and saw a friend in Yamagata had posted on Facebook, 'Was that one big enough for you'. Minutes later the news starts filtering through and the Today Programme picks it up. The disasters unfold threefold and we have the news streaming on BBC and NHK at work. The British newscasters stumble through unwieldy Miyagi ken and Iwate ken town names. Images of black waves and boats shoring in combeenee parking lots surface. Another friend wearily announces the 200th aftershock in the Kantou area. One lady ambles around a place she once knew and no longer recognises and pronounces blankly, 言葉が出ない- Words fail me. I think of Matsushima's tiny pine islands on the coast near Sendai and wonder if it is still there.




Friends in Tokyo and Yamagata seem fine. Each of them has friends with bad stories though. The more I think about it, the more people I think to contact and check on. People I knew in Sendai, even Ishinomaki. I think of friends to be concerned about, and that prompts more friends to think about and contact. Just when I thought I had shaken Japan from my system and taken a step away, I realised in a pathetically individual way that I am bound to that weird little archipelago in more ways, and through more people, than I knew.