News of Japan’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook my world. I was glued to news updates; I watched amateur videos online of tsunami ravages and widespread damages; I was sucked into following nearly every news and images captured. They differed but the content was always the same – Northeast Japan was in a sorry state; the Japanese people suffered; the damages were beyond imaginable.
That day, the scenes of rows of bobbing cars, ships and homes tossed around like they were bath toys gnawed into me. I felt sick to the stomach and reached out to friends in Japan on Facebook by typing out empty words of comfort. I needed to bond with them for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
Even as we mourned the insurmountable losses the affected faced, we’d all privately sighed a relief that Kobe was spared this time. Kobe had paid too dearly in 1995 when the 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit. Kobe folks -- as if acting on old memories -- reacted this time by buying toilet rolls by the dozens that resulted in storewide shortages.
Granted that I’d only lived in Kobe for a year and hadn’t fully assimilated into Japanese life well enough for me to converse in fluent Japanese, I’d fallen in love with Japan. From their well-preserved heritage and culture to their deliciously simple meals, Japan captivated me. And what I gained most was by observing and having contact with the locals that changed my life’s perspectives.
The Japanese taught me the importance of attention to details. Like in gift-giving, it was much less the “thought that counts” which in my culture, was an excuse to explain a haphazardly thrown-together present. To them, the thoughtful act started from the perfect home baked biscuits to the way they were presented in a cutesy basket, right down to the handing over the gift in their partial head-bent manner. They took pride in seeing their task from start to finish.
It is hard to compete with the Japanese on that account. The hubs once described to me a 50-ish year old Japanese man whose sole job was to direct cars in the company car park. With little more than a cloth flag and whistle and under the scorching summer sun in his smart uniform, he took on the seemingly mundane task with great fervor and not once did the cloth flag nor whistle rested. It was as good a job as any and some one had to do it, and he did --with pride.
Our cultural orientation guide told us about how harmony was an important concept in Japan when we first arrived in our host country. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time but days into Japanese living, I learnt that it was carried out unobtrusively in every Japanese breath. If you have a cold or cough, you put on the face mask, never mind how ridiculous you look. That is harmony; it is being considerate to others. One afternoon, my kids played in our apartment courtyard and the next day, the apartment superintendent came over and told me in his most polite way that they shouldn’t ride their bikes because the plastic wheels made a grating noise loud enough to offend neighbours in another building. I was annoyed but that was my kids’ and my lesson in harmony -- learning to make sacrifices for others.
I read in the recent Times magazine how one Japanese farmer, who had grains that were soiled from the tsunami floods had, inspite of, offered his neighbour his unblemished grains from his share. Such self-less sharing were more common reports than opportunistic looting in this period of food rationing. It is chaos in Honshu but the Japanese make up for it by being harmonious.
It makes me sad that the tsunami and earthquake have caused extensive damages and taken numerous lives. But Japanese values are universally about order, beauty and preservation; and the people are possibly one of the few industrious and stoic lot. Perhaps another country dealt with the same hand might falter at rebuilding attempts but not my beloved Japan. They will weather this stoically and few years from now, the tears on the land would only be but beauty marks.
