A Work-less Weekday with No Cause for Celebration
The crowds of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau was perhaps the most chaotic scene I have witnessed in this otherwise calm and orderly atmosphere after the Quake. Thousands of foreigners, students and professionals alike, rushed to obtain the permits for reentering Japan before heading back their respective native countries. The noises of complaints about slow processing mixed with immigration personnel's unending apologies for inefficiently handling the "unprecedented crowds" (certainly no exaggeration there).
Also heard among the crowds were frequent phone calls, those from faraway families checking on the conditions of the receivers of the calls, but more frequently, those in the endless queues for permits confirming their plane tickets back home. In all this noise and crowds, I, for the first time in the past few days, finally felt, physically rather than just mentally, that Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the disaster areas, is really going through something unusual and...detrimental.
Over repeated announcements on TV about scheduled power cuts starting today and shortage of train services across the city, the crowds still increased in size, allowing the queue to snake through two floors of the building and into the streets (all the way around the street block around the Bureau building, in fact). And the people just would not stop coming. The normally composed officials at the Bureau lost their nerves and started screaming at the unchangingly stoic crowds.
But the line refused to inch forward even a tiny bit for several hours, as frustration built up among the people. All this is no doubt all because of the Quake. Even as both the Japanese and the foreigners supported each other mentally (well, perhaps because they all had nowhere else to go during the unending emergencies), the foreigners are at the same time thinking of getting out of the country at the first available opportunity. leaving the anxiety-filled metropolis.
Power cuts and more quakes...secondary damages that can easily plunge everyone into darkness or...worse...so much for an unasked-for paid day-off, right? As many people, especially the foreign workers, out there relieve their work-related stress in a self-congratulated luckiness of having an unexpected three-day weekend, other are circulating stories of pessimism. Rumors of unidentified deaths, endless rescue works digging up fresh new corpses in the disaster areas, and nationwide food shortages abound.
A holiday now, even if it is perfectly timed as White Day, makes no sense as something worth celebrating. And what is more, the uncertainty that faces Japan and all of us, both Japanese and non-Japanese, only makes the quiet calmness prevailing in every neighborhood on this work-less Monday all the more scary. After all, since all of us have definite stakes in the continued stability of Japanese economy and societal order.
All this calmness perhaps will become something so precious in retrospect as every sector of the society continues down a direction toward turbulence. The sight of noisy confusion here at the Immigration Bureau may have served as an omen for all that will come in the near future. The frustrated crowds at the Bureau today may become a sight that will unfortunately become fearfully common across the country.
Of course, I am crossing my fingers that the situation does not get any worse. And by the fact that the queue to obtain reentry permit is an optimistic sign by itself. Yes, there will be an inevitable mass exodus of foreigners in Japan back to their respective countries, but they are all due to reenter the country at some time in the near future. Theses people have not lost confidence in Japan's future (at least economically speaking), and all of us foreigners remaining here should be sharing this sentiment.
Also heard among the crowds were frequent phone calls, those from faraway families checking on the conditions of the receivers of the calls, but more frequently, those in the endless queues for permits confirming their plane tickets back home. In all this noise and crowds, I, for the first time in the past few days, finally felt, physically rather than just mentally, that Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the disaster areas, is really going through something unusual and...detrimental.
Over repeated announcements on TV about scheduled power cuts starting today and shortage of train services across the city, the crowds still increased in size, allowing the queue to snake through two floors of the building and into the streets (all the way around the street block around the Bureau building, in fact). And the people just would not stop coming. The normally composed officials at the Bureau lost their nerves and started screaming at the unchangingly stoic crowds.
But the line refused to inch forward even a tiny bit for several hours, as frustration built up among the people. All this is no doubt all because of the Quake. Even as both the Japanese and the foreigners supported each other mentally (well, perhaps because they all had nowhere else to go during the unending emergencies), the foreigners are at the same time thinking of getting out of the country at the first available opportunity. leaving the anxiety-filled metropolis.
Power cuts and more quakes...secondary damages that can easily plunge everyone into darkness or...worse...so much for an unasked-for paid day-off, right? As many people, especially the foreign workers, out there relieve their work-related stress in a self-congratulated luckiness of having an unexpected three-day weekend, other are circulating stories of pessimism. Rumors of unidentified deaths, endless rescue works digging up fresh new corpses in the disaster areas, and nationwide food shortages abound.
A holiday now, even if it is perfectly timed as White Day, makes no sense as something worth celebrating. And what is more, the uncertainty that faces Japan and all of us, both Japanese and non-Japanese, only makes the quiet calmness prevailing in every neighborhood on this work-less Monday all the more scary. After all, since all of us have definite stakes in the continued stability of Japanese economy and societal order.
All this calmness perhaps will become something so precious in retrospect as every sector of the society continues down a direction toward turbulence. The sight of noisy confusion here at the Immigration Bureau may have served as an omen for all that will come in the near future. The frustrated crowds at the Bureau today may become a sight that will unfortunately become fearfully common across the country.
Of course, I am crossing my fingers that the situation does not get any worse. And by the fact that the queue to obtain reentry permit is an optimistic sign by itself. Yes, there will be an inevitable mass exodus of foreigners in Japan back to their respective countries, but they are all due to reenter the country at some time in the near future. Theses people have not lost confidence in Japan's future (at least economically speaking), and all of us foreigners remaining here should be sharing this sentiment.
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