Earthquake!

10.53am, Sunday 20th March, 2005...

I was sitting in a small glass cubicle, exchanging opening pleasantries with a high level English student, when all of a sudden the lights went out, the ground shook, the table shuddered, the glass partitions rattled... chairs fell over, foundations creaked, two enormous filing cabinets toppled over, sending files and realia everywhere...

Pretty strange stuff for Kyushu, the place where earthquakes seldom strike... equally strange was the stuff that preceded and proceded it... to wit:

- the night before was a party of immense proportions, and most of us have dim recollections of beer, food and very late karaoke... during the latter, no attempts on our behalf could make "Matsuken Samba" appear on the screens...

- I woke up at 8.30am and found a scrawled note pinned to my ceiling, proclaiming "I promise not to drink, dance and sing with female colleagues ever again"... also, beside my bed were 4 genki drinks, lined up like little soldiers... I really can't remember how either got there...

- In the immediate aftermath of the quake, no one batted an eyelid in the pachinko parlour opposite our branch, and continued to play their machines... a colleague's quip that they felt like a pig had shat in their head became the soundbyte of the day...

- At the same time our branch manager was seen completing a sales to someone in the darkness...

- Some very random stuff appeared in the teacher's room after the clean up, such as brand new packets of much sought after stickers and manilla files, a little card with cartoon guns on, a lesson plan from a departed colleague...

- Feeling very rough from last night, myself and a colleague went to Coco ichiban, with the idea that hot curry would chase away a hangover... what followed was the hottest curry in our short lives, complete with dayglo orange spice-oil that was separating from the meat sauce before our very eyes... needless to say, we felt infinitely worse than we did before, and we still had half a day to go...

- An hour or so later, a bizarre costumed procession took place outside the branch... men in costumes, girls in green jackets with balloon animals, lots of drums and whooping... after this, there was an equally strange procession, when scores of little girls in elaborate kimonos were carried along the street in regal pallanquins by men with mannequin masks on the top of their heads...

- Immediately heading from work to Yamaguchi prefecture, my girlfriend and I stopped to take some pictures of the incredible skies. The clouds were at once wispy and full, ball-like and stretched...

- My day was capped by a heavenly onsen at 1am, in which I thought I might die of pleasure... however, on a whim I decided to sit in one of the bubble pools, and felt a sudden, sickening twinge in my lower back... the whole left side of my body spasmed and the more I moved, the number and more painful everything became... I seriously thought that I had slipped multiple disks or had a stroke, such was the pain... only then did my girlfriend's brother inform me that I had in fact sat in the "electricity pool", and was virtually sitting on the current...

Perhaps it was my punishment for such self indulgence. After all, I must admit that once I knew that my girlfriend was safe, I was excited to have experienced an earthquake, and on the 4 hour drive north all I could think of was the waiting onsen. I didn't think once about those that might not have been so lucky, and I really should have...