Message aus Tokio

Eben von einem Freund bekommen:

It's 2.15 in the morning here in Tokyo and the dark streams of people walking home, home, are unending. I have just returned to my lady, a hot bath, a warm bed in a house that is, for the now, safe; and am grateful. I had been walking 7 hours out of a city gone strange, both muted and excited: kids sprawling on the floors of department stores, lolling against the Gucchi and Bulgari counters, lapping up the warmth: there is nowhere to go. All doors are open everywhere. 

Tokyo relies on its fabulously efficient web of train-lines. But today, there are no trains. Instead, streams and streams of people form broad dark rivers, the metropolis discovering its feet. Cars stretching to the horizon and loud as ever yet powerless: at a standstill. All about me there are people leaning into their cellphones, not speaking: the network, overloaded, is out, all one hears is dod-dod-dod-dod-dod... People queue in front of the few public telephones: the fixed-line network works! Restaurants are empty, cooks leaning on door-frames, but a few cafes are packed: it's wait and see, wait and see. And everybody walks.

I am one of the lucky ones, I live a mere half-night's walk from the city. Most people live further out, 1 or 2 hours by train, and have no chance of making it home tonight. Thus all the schools and universities are open to anybody needing shelter, some restaurants have signs outside "Please feel free to come and use our toilets and telephone".

After the very strong tremors mid-afternoon -- strong enough that it took a dozen of us to keep a wall of lockers from crushing us --, aftershocks continue. There is not much we can do. Lady and I have prepared an emergency bag with money, warm clothes, candles, headlamps, water.

But Tokyo, so far, has come off with nary a scratch. True, in the vicinity, a factory is burning, and a natgas storage plant is in flames. But I saw little debris in the city -- mostly concrete buildings where I walked although there are also a lot of older, weaker wood-constructions in this vast abode of 20 million humans.

More northern cities like Sendai were not so lucky. A few hundred people have been swept away by a tidal wave, many dozens were killed by falling walls. Also, a nuclear power station had to shut down ("coolant problems") and people in a 3 km radius were told to go "away". The scale of destruction cannot yet be determined: it is night