Karinh Eurenius is a post-doc at the University of Tokyo. She went there with her husband Jonas a year and a half ago. Before going to Tokyo, Karinh did her doctorate at Chalmers University in Gothenburg as a member of the neutron scattering groups there. She was a regular attendee at the Swedish Neutron Scattering Society meetings and had a strong interest in ESS. Mats Lindroos and I spent an evening with them in Tokyo last year and enjoyed an unusual meal together with Kirin beer to wash it all down.

We thank her and her husband for their ready willingness to share their very affecting story of their experience of the earthquake, and we wish these two brave young people all the best as they pick up their lives again in Tokyo:

It all started on the 11th of March. We got up really early and walked together to the metro, which we never do; I like to walk to Tokyo University, which is north from Tsukiji where we live and since my husband Jonas works in a suit it tends to get way too hot, so he's always taking the underground. That Friday, it felt like we had to be together a bit extra, since we were expecting a visit from a good friend from Sweden in our tiny apartment.

I went to my boss straight away when I got to work, since he's normally in early in the morning. I had received declaration papers which needed to be ready and signed by the 15th, so it was important to get it done as soon as possible. Since we’ve been here for a while I know that papers + Japan always = a whole lot of hassle and time. I was advised to go back down to my ward office and sort it out directly: I was therefore contemplating taking my computer with me and work from home during the day. Due to prior plans I decided it'd be more practical to go back to university and finally pick up our visitor from Ueno at the end of the day, which is just next to Hongo campus. That was frankly bloody lucky.

All went perfectly fine and I just said goodbye to my lunch date Margareta and made it around the corner, when the ground started shaking/rocking back and forth; it was like being on a ferry when there's a storm. I was just underneath a set of electricity wires and the poles were moving almost 40 cm from side to side. The cars looked like they were in an RnB video, where pressurized air is let in and out, while this was swaying them from side to side. All of a sudden I was swiftly dragged into a small parking lot by an old couple, who of course had seen me standing there completely frozen under the wires. They probably decided they'd better save the stupid foreigner, who didn't understand it wasn’t entirely brilliant to stand there. The lady quickly dragged me down on my knees and showed me I had to put my handbag on my head and hold on to her and her husband, who in their turn held on to their neighbour. Alarms, which sounded like the flight alarms you'd hear in a movie, started going off and many of us, still on our hands and knees, lost balance.

At that point I remembered that Jonas had read to me that if the quake was quite big, then it'd be hard to keep your balance if you were standing straight up; I became really scared. At the same time, I was thinking: 'OK, so I'm supposed to sit here on a parking lot, with a bunch of old people, in a country where it's impossible to understand what they are saying, with a handbag on my head, in addition being my favourite handbag I got from Mum which I haven't even had the time to tell her  + without Jonas, who's at work on the 44th floor in Mori Tower, which is probably moving several meters in each direction, and he'll probably fall and hit his toe again; that's just brilliant'. Things started to fall from the balconies around us and I tried to get my phone out to call Jonas and tell him about this really absurd situation, when it hit me full frontal what was happening. I just became completely cold from the inside. Up until then it’d been as when you are diving or snorkeling the first time: you see the underwater world like it’s on TV. I remember starting to shake so much I couldn’t get any of the numbers right on my display and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. At the same time as I was repeating to myself ‘Mori tower is one of the best built skyscrapers in the world; it’s designed to take a 9 on the Richter scale; there are stairs he can climb down if the elevators aren’t running; I have seen they have fire extinguishers everywhere; Japanese people are calm and methodical and have protocols for everything..’

It felt like an eternity sitting there, even if it was just a couple of minutes. When the ground finally was calmer, all kinds of sirens started going off and people were calling out loudly for each other. I again tried my phone, but the phone net was completely dead. I then started running towards my building on campus and bumped into my research group. At first, no one was allowed inside since care was taken to the gas bottles in the lab; we were then asked to terminate all experiments before the after-shock arrived. I think by then I was hit by a small panic attack and decided to go into my office and get my handbag with all my cards including alien registration card, driver’s license and my keys. I met people who had been stuck under their desks during the initial shake who were running for the exits. I just managed to dive into my office, take my handbag and a pair of sneakers I had under my desk, before one of the language teachers came in after me and said 'Now, Colin-san, you out with me'.

The after-shock, which came about 10 minutes later, was so strong that all the windows on the buildings around us were shaking and cracks started forming in the walls. Some people became afraid and started crying, but most of us were still silent and desperately tried calling for our families and friends. The phones were still dead. We were then asked to go home, since the university area was being evacuated; not once did I hear any of this information in English, which I found very worrying and stressful.

Just when I started walking, my phone rang and it was Jonas who managed to get through via Viber, since the 3G net had just started working on and off. By that point I was so scared I couldn’t cry; the line was bad and soon gone, but we managed to get ‘am OK, walking home now, meet you there, yes, going now’ through. This was more than an hour after the original shake.

Then the strangest walk ever through the streets of Tokyo started. There’s always a lot of people out in the city, but keep in mind everyone normally on trains, metro, JR etc underground, EVERYONE had to walk home. Some people tried to get into the few taxis which were still available, but after I had been going for about 10 minutes, the traffic stopped moving completely. Everyone was calm, but it was disturbingly quiet. People were still trying to call their near and dear ones, but it was impossible to get through.

It was when I passed a big screen in Akihabara, when it all became seriously scarey. The pictures showed an approximately 10 m wave sweeping in overland, taking everything with it and the destruction was total. The news was of course in Japanese, but the map that followed was very clear in its message that a national tsunami warning had gone out all over the east, south and parts of the west coasts. Our apartment is just down by Tokyo Bay and the wave which had been cabled out in that TV programme had reached more than a kilometre inland. I became extremely anxious, since I know that against a tsunami there is no chance; I however decided to follow the stream of people south through the city, since a probable wave would likely pass over Chiba before reaching us and there would be some sort of warning. I hoped so at least. Besides, it was my only chance to find Jonas at that point, since it was now completely impossible to reach each other.During that hour it took me to go home, I saw two fires. Normally, I guess they’d have been quite an attraction for worried people; now we just walked past in almost perfect lanes which measured more than ten people across by the time we passed Tokyo station. There was more than one shake every five minutes walking home, so in the end it almost felt like walking on a surfboard. Many people were wearing helmets and a lot of them had city maps, since they’d normally be on the trains. Apparently, all the bikes in Don Quixote were sold out within minutes, since people were trying to get home. We were told to ‘avoid tall buildings’, which I found was almost hilarious; however getting closer to Ginza, I saw men and women in suits from the skyscraper districts sitting next to the homeless in the outer Imperial Garden. By then some people had started parking their cars in the middle of the streets, since the traffic had not been moving for some time. When I finally reached our house I ran into Jonas outside and we hugged for a long time; around us people had gathered in front of yet another big screen at our entrance and some were crying. The death tolls from Sendai and its vicinity had started coming up.

The elevator in our house was not working, so we had to take the fire escape up to the 10th floor; until that point, none of us had given our apartment even one thought. When we got in, we just stared for several minutes. Finally Jonas sighed: ‘But Jesus Christ, it looks like a group of crack heads have been partying here for two weeks’. We looked at each other and nervously started giggling and then laughed until we were both in tears. We finally mumbled ‘it’s only things, we’re OK’ and started cleaning up. Our new, really nice iMac, which we had been saving a long time for, was on the floor, upside down in a pool of water. It came from the water boiler, which of course had smashed when it hit the floor; the bench oven was completely crushed, lying next to the rice cooker, which we had bought the day before. It looked like someone had punched big holes in it. There were several marks in the wooden floor where furniture had fallen down. Everything that had been standing on the counters in the kitchen, a pot with stirrers and spatulas, oatmeal and O’Boy in nice jars, a few glasses and so forth, were scattered and smashed across the floor. The lamps had fallen down, and were of course completely broken and half the larder was in the sink. All the above, together with our dresser that had fallen over and tipped out all its contents, our big palm tree, my jewelry box and scarves, the clothes in our wardrobes, all in a soup of softener, washing powder, soil and spaghetti - it was the biggest mess I have seen. The only thing which was closed was the refrigerator and the cupboard with our china. That was very fortunate, since adding food on top of that mess and considering the weight of the fridge, it’d be seriously hard to sort out. However, both the refrigerator and also the bed had moved several decimetres from the walls. I didn’t realise until several hours later, that I was actually on my way to work from home that day. I could have been alone in the apartment with all that shaking and furniture moving around. I suddenly felt very thankful I hadn’t.

We started trying to get the computer working along with our network, so we could contact our families in Sweden. We found a bottle of Laphroaigh, which had been in its container and was whole (!) and took two proper whiskys before continuing. All of a sudden the whole apartment started rocking from side to side so that our doors started banging into each other, which after that frequently happened every fifth minute. It was very stressful, since we didn’t know if there’d be another big hit again. We cleaned up as much as possible and decided to go over to our friends’ house; they were just as freaked out as we were and none of us wanted to be alone throughout the night. In all this mess, we had of course not been able to track down our friend from Sweden; we just had to hope she was most probably stuck at the airport or on a train which had been stopped. The whole country was struck by electricity and gas cuts on and off, which meant there was no hot water and no public transport. My phone finally rang and it was my friend telling me they had not been able to land in Tokyo, but been directed to a military base near to Osaka. She would however probably be able to take a train to Tokyo the following day and stay inside for the night, which made us all very happy. Just before she called, we had then seen on the news that one of the express trains leaving Narita had gone off its tracks into a field with no clear number of casualties and two fully occupied trains were still not accounted for.

The night was very restless and just when we managed to go to sleep, the house’s earthquake alarm went off; our friends decided it was better to sleep in the lobby, so we ran down the stairs from the 12th floor. It felt safer to stay there until the early morning, together with other concerned people from the building. We then walked through a spookily empty city towards Tokyo main station and met up with a pretty tired, but otherwise alright Hallgerd. We walked back to our house, had a talk with our neighbours about the latest news from the Japanese press and started yet another updating session online.

Since it was now ’only’ shaking every 30 minutes on average and they had lifted the tsunami warning in Tokyo + we were going nuts just sitting around waiting, we decided to take a walk through the city. It was nice, but only after a few hours we had a phone call from Jonas, saying we had to come home immediately since there had been an explosion in a nuclear plant in the north. We ran up from the metro and over to our house, up the fire escape to the 10th again and, quite concerned, listened to the news. They told us it was a hydrogen explosion and we became a bit calmer, but wanted to be extra safe and decided to stay indoors. After a while we started receiving alarming news about the water and food running scarce in Tokyo; we decided to at least go down to our little store on the corner to buy whatever they had, since we didn’t know if or when another explosion would occur and we’d had to stay inside for some time. When we came down, the shelves were half empty and I have never picked up such random foods in my life nor had such a strange welcome dinner in our house. We had planned to take our visitor to go to our Japanese friend’s really fantastic restaurant, but this had of course been cancelled. During the night we felt several big shakes waking us up; they turned out to be 6:s on the Richter scale.

The following morning there was no further news about aftershocks, tsunamis or explosions. We decided to go for a walk in Harajuku/Yoyogi park/Meji/Shinjuku/Shibuya, since the metro had started running in that direction. There was hardly a soul in the tunnels and almost completely quiet; it was seriously freaky and it felt much better getting above ground. When we arrived, there were very many westerners out, but still quite empty compared how it usually is. In some parts it was like a strange ghost town. Everyone who knew Japanese was probably at home watching the news.

Just when we stepped off at our station on our way back, there was another alarm about an explosion at the Fukushima plant. Everyone was asked to go inside and wait for further instructions; we relaxed a bit when it was reported to be yet another hydrogen explosion, but then started discussing what we should do. The situation had become extremely creepy. Having reactors blowing up for whatever reason did not seem reassuring and the epicentres of several of the shakes were now moving south towards us. So far the wind was blowing towards to the north, but what would happen if a there was a nuclear explosion and the wind turned? When would we find out overall, but especially for us in English? What if there was a release in the ground water? There were several warnings about heavy aftershocks which were just as likely to hit Tokyo full frontal; even though no one can know if and when they would occur, but what would happen? How bad is a big hit in Tokyo? Would we also be hit by a tsunami? And if yes, where? We became really worried when news from our French friends came, regarding their embassy telling the French citizens in Tokyo to leave the country immediately. At that point we started checking flights. However, we still had not been given any warnings from the Swedish embassy, so we decided to wait another day before making a decision. We called friends in Tokyo and by that point everyone we knew who had children or were pregnant, had already left or were in the process of leaving.

Jonas still decided to go to work on the Monday, while I stayed with my friend, since people were not advised at that point to enter the university area. Hallgerd and I decided to go on a small outing close to home and took the monorail to Odaiba; we did not however dare to get off it if there’d be another alarm. We then went to Jonas’ job in Roppongi and walked home together, so that we’d all be at the same place as much as possible, if something happened. Again the night was filled with worry since there were several strong shakes; when we woke up we all felt almost sea sick, due to the house shaking back and forth so much.

When reports started coming in about a fire in the third reactor in combination with ambiguous news about a nuclear outburst, we decided to leave immediately. We got in touch with our families and jobs and told them that we were leaving as soon as possible. The ticket prices were rising fast and within a few hours it was almost ten times the money to go from Japan to Europe. Hallgerd already has a return ticket to go back to the US, so we prioritised getting her to the airport; however, when we got to Ueno, no trains were leaving for Narita, so we rushed down to the shuttle port in Ningyocho and managed to get her on a bus. I then ran back, since I received a phone call from Jonas saying we had tickets for Singapore via Vietnam and had about 20 minutes to pack. Since several planes had been redirected to Osaka and they still seemed to hold their normal air schedule, we did not know if we could leave from Narita. In addition, to stay overnight in any location without electricity would most likely be cold since the temperatures had started to drop. At the same time, we knew that if we got away and could land in Ho Chi Minh as planned, it’d be around 30 degrees and 80% humidity. On top of that, we were not sure when, or at that point actually if, we could return, so anything of both an affectionate and money value needed to go with us. It was hence a suitcase containing my grandmother’s medallion, a knitted hat, flipflops, my watch I got from my family, two woolen sweaters, a sarong, my favorite white handbag I got from my Mom, my computer.. I have never had such a crazy content in a luggage ever.

We however managed to get to the shuttle bus passing a long line; when I had said goodbye to my friend, there had been three really big sumo wrestlers waiting there as well, so from now on we decided to call it ‘the sumo terminal’. Traffic was very calm on the highway and we could in good time sort out exit/entrance papers for me at the airport; I also asked the flight company if we could possibly get on an earlier flight, which turned out to be OK. We had to wait for 16 h in Vietnam though, but it was worth it. It was possible to sort out some cash, which we had been a bit nervous about, since we had read news about the Japanese stock market and the value of the YEN being unstable. Both our salaries and savings are now in Japan, but it turned out fine though.

As if the computer and chemistry gods had understood that neither of us were especially tough landing in Singapore, we got the most amazing taxi driver. He got us from door to door within half an hour at a price of about 14 EURO, including a smashing guided tour as we were passing by all the important spots. The hotel manager himself welcomed us with fantastic and service-minded manners. He looked very understanding when we said we came from Tokyo and almost straight away sent up room service. Then we slept for a very long time.

Now we have been here for about a week; it’s supposed to be a ‘vacation’, but it so far has been very strange and stressful, not knowing when or if we can come back. In one way we are grateful we had the opportunity to leave, while at the same time we have our lives in Tokyo. We are scheduled to go back on the 28th and are currently following the news several times every day.

We want to thank everyone who has written us or called; better families, friends or colleagues than you guys are hard to find and we have been so happy to receive word from all of you! We are now going to start the watching-all-the-news-channels-and-reading-all-the-latest-articles-regarding-if-we-are-safe-in-Japan-or-not for tonight. We will post further updates on Facebook and are also available via email or Skype; thank you all again for thinking of us, it has really warmed both our hearts!

Karinh & Jonas

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