Seth & Japan

So I finally got Seth to write about his experience in Japan. Unfortunately he didn't take a camera so we don't have any pictures:

I had a great time in Japan for the first time, but I wish I would have brought a phrase book so I could have asked questions. I was working one of Nissan's old assembly plants where the first physical vehicles are built. During the week we experienced little, hardly noticeable tremors (about 2/day or so). When the big one hit there were 20 of us in a somewhat small room crowded around a vehicle taking measurements. For about 30 sec there was a good rattle (hanging lights swaying, vibration). I slowly started toward a safer part of the room, and a local guy was smiling at me saying “it’s ok, ok” (I guess he was used to that kind of stuff). Then all of a sudden all hell broke loose! Like a freight train went through the plant. That local guy then yelled “OUT GET OUT”. As we started to leave it got even worse (10 freight trains) you could see the truss members in the roof flexing and every step (we were running by then) felt strange, almost uneven. After we evacuated the plant we just stood in the parking lot getting sea sick. It felt like we were all on a boat in the water and someone was slowly pushing us back and forth a few inches. That seemed to go on for 10 or 15 minutes. For a few days after I felt like I just got off a cruise boat and had to stop and look at stuff to see if there really was shaking or not (50% were false alarms). When we tried to go back to our hotel the trains weren't running so we had to stand in line for a taxi for about 2 1/2 hours. We couldn't make it to the hotel room we were supposed to be staying in that night (one nearer to the airport) so we were going to try and stay at the hotel that we had been staying at all week, but the rooms were all booked up because all public transportation was down. We ended up staying with some co-workers in their hotel room. I got to spend the night on the floor. My co-worker made fun of me because I slept through a large after shock (I think a 6). In my defense the builds over there are built to sway, so probably helped me sleep on that hard flood. We got up the next morning and the trains were partially working. We made it to our next hotel and were able to leave a day later than our originally scheduled flight because our original flight had been canceled and the airports had been closed.

It was a pretty crazy experience, quite the adrenaline rush. I had a great time in Japan.