1st day - 2: March 11, Fri.

We came back home around 4:30. It grows dark around 5 in Sendai because of its longitude (?). It is already March, but spring has not come yet. It was chilly and snow flied that evening. Aftershock continued. Some of them were big enough to frighten my younger son Dan terribly.

Between those aftershocks, I sneaked into my house several times and grabbed blankets & bedding, coats, and an emergency bag. I also put rice into lunch box. The rice was warm in the rice cooker. I powered hot water from the pot into water bottles.

Neighbors in our condo were hanging around at the parking lot. I didn't know some of them. We were the first met, but shared that situation. We lost power. It was getting dark. It was chilly. How was it going? Can we go back to home and sleep on the Futon tonight? Boys and girls were screaming and laughing every time aftershock occurred. All what we concerned were that we got in trouble. That's it. We had no idea what disaster occurred in the coast area. No power means no TV program, thus no fearful video.

My husband Ken, a University associate professor, travels a lot. Overseas every quarter, Tokyo trip every other week, any other domestic trip every other month. Roughly he travels for two weeks a month. But. That day, he was in Sendai. Oh, god. How lucky we were. I paged him when I successfully picked up my boys, but couldn't reach him. I tried more than ten times. I e-mailed a message to his mobile phone. His gave me a reply saying OK for the first time. In a hour, he was gone. I e-mailed several messages to him telling where we were, but no response. I didn't worry so much. I just understood that the traffic was busy.

I drove our car and parked at an outdoor parking space across our condo building, because Dan importunated to get out of our parking structure.  He scared to death. As soon as we got onto the car, it started to snow. It was almost blizzard. I worried about Ken. No answer yet. In the car, Dan kept complaining and quaking. Sam kept quiet. He tends to internalize stress, but Dan does not.

Finally, Ken came back. It was around 7:00 pm. How relieved we were. I cried. Dan cried. Sam almost did. Ken told us that some Tsunami hit the coast area and it seemed disasterous. But we did not care so much. What we have to think about at that time was how we survive that night. 

We had hot water in the bottle. We had warm rice, but no seasoning. No other dish. Where do we sleep? Firstly, we walked to a nearest supermarket to get something eat.  It was dark. It was snowing. No light. No traffic light. And there were hundreds of people formed a line and waited for their turn at the supermarket. It took an hour. Another aftershock occurred. Dan cried, but we kept waiting in the line. No one complained. No one tried to take them all when their turn came. We bought two large bottles of water, two large bottles of oolong tea, a bunch of bananas, ten pot noodles, and so on. We ate them in the car and slept there that night.