Tokiyo Trip 2 : Natural Disaster

I'm still processing all the things that happened for the last 8 days while we were in Tokyo & Saitama. We just got back early this morning and after cleaning up our backpacks, I'm sitting at my table trying to write some drafts of those little experiences while they are still fresh in mind :D

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Love-hate relationship with mother-nature :

Japan is in a transition from summer to autumn, so it's a bit rainy and breezy cold. While I was planning on the preparation there, I checked on the weather forecast for the whole week. It was supposed to be clear week and slight rain on random day. I hate winter and not looking forward for summer so I decided to pick this particular date of in-between. So we just bought foldable umbrella from back home as a preparation. On the first night we arrived at the Haneda Airport, it rained unexpectedly. Ditto the whole day after when we were supposed to meet Ma's old sensei, Ishijima san and before our check-in time in the late afternoon. 

We were drenched wet with our heavy backpacks because we decided to walk from the Tokyo Station to the Imperial Palace after she suggested for all of us to visit right that time after we had some matcha dessert. It rained and rained and rained. We were exhausted beyond word and grumpy.

Little did we know, that during the raining time there was a really bad flood & landslides going on in Ibaraki, Fukushima, Miyagi and Tochigi, all prefectures located right next to Saitama where we were staying :F From the latest news; over 2.8 million people were advised to evacuated, 7 died and many peoples were still missing. We didn't even know until we arrived at the apartment and I read Ma's messages asking about the flood :

Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Japan. (Jiji Press/Kohei Chibahara) 

Joso, Ibaraki prefecture (Kyodo News via AP)

I was worried sick. I asked the apartment's owner on the risk of it happening to where we were staying and he said that we were all safe 'for now' and I should not worry much. Well being me, I kept on constantly checking the weather forecast for the next 7 days. True, there were no rain in Saitama or Tokyo while we were there except for the last night before we boarded back home.

For all the death and destruction, I'm really sorry :(
But I'm glad we were both okay.

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On the second morning while we were sleeping in cozy comforter, I was awaken by a slow shacking. The earth was slowly shaking! O-O Earthquake! Again, being me with my automatic response to my survival instinct, I was down on the floor beneath our sleeping bunk in 2 minutes. =.= False alarm, it was just a mini earthquake. Later that day, several train lines were closed for safety checking. So I wasn't dreaming, it really did happened.

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Another incident happened during our stay in Saitama was the Mount Aso's eruption several days ago. Mount Aso is located in Kyushu, near Fukuoka - the place I stayed for my exchange student program. It is really far from Tokyo, but I'm not fond of nuclear plants all around Japan. There were no death in report, but still considered as one of worrying thing that happened during our stay :(

Reuters/Japan Meteorological Agency

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All in all beneath all the happy merry 8 days as in in my Instagram, I was constantly worried for things that might happen. Even though Japan is considered as a really safe and clean and friendly country to lived in, there are big uncontrollable things like natural disasters : typhoon, tsunami, earthquake and volcano eruption.

For this, I learned that no place in earth is perfect.