The unpredictability of nature in Japan: testimony by Patricia Loison

Read: What to do in the event of an earthquake

Life is not a long quiet river

The Japanese are dancing on a volcano. With elegance. Still. That's what I tell myself as I brave the swarm of clouds clinging to the hills of Kobe for my morning walk along the river.

This stream that descends at full speed from the mountain came out of its bed this summer.

It is, however, severely framed: sunken bed, stone steps to slow it down, high walls on either side. I was already gone when he turned Mister Hyde in a raging riverway. I discovered in amazement the drowned banks, the brown water rolling, rushing towards the ocean, foaming up to the overhanging cars.

Two months later, only a few loose tar patches were left that deformed the road. The promenade is cleaned up; a gleaming mini-sidewalk has even been built to avoid the bruised area. Above, two neatly dressed women, one green blouse and the other in white trousers, are chatting. Indifferent to the yellow lights of the river flashing in lousy weather. One holds her hat. After the early summer floods, typhoons, and an earthquake, higher up in Hokkaido, they chat, smile, and laugh.

I clung to this "normal" daily life when we moved here.

False alarm?

Earthquake phobic, unbeatable on the Pacific Ring of Fire, and victim of an anxiety attack on the San Andreas Fault during the filming of Faut Pas Rêver, Japan is my worst nightmare... I jump at the slightest start: a motorcycle that starts quickly, a passing train. I have only one question: "Is it an earthquake? ".

People shake their heads gently. Not at all: it's a car, a metro...

Height of the ridiculous: the choice of the Ikea sofa with my husband and his collaborator. Instead of savoring this rare moment of marital shopping, I'm on the watch, my feet glued to the floor... "Patricia, it's the shuttle that makes that noise... it connects the store to the main island every ten minutes..." explains the young woman, smiling.

I also think I faint when we pick up my Japanese car from a giant second-hand center. Here again, I ask the fatal question. Furthermore, salespeople and customers assure me that only the roar of dozens of vehicles is being tested.

Day after day, my anxiety disappears. I gain confidence. Who said it was shaking all the time in this country? Old ladies pad down the sidewalk to go shopping. Children in navy blue and white uniforms come home from school alone, barely taller than their suitcases. If they, the most vulnerable, go about their business... I have to be able to get used to it.

I even undergo a permanent formation: the meander of overpasses that connects Kobe to the various artificial islands which border it. Some pitch dangerously as the trucks pass. To the point of worrying my daughters. Now it's up to me to answer proudly: "Tsssst... it's nothing girls, the bridge is flexible, that's all... to better resist shocks precisely... but it's solid, don't worry. do not worry ".

However, impossible to escape the statistics by living on the archipelago. Thousands of tremors every year. Most invisible to humans...

Hard return to reality

The first notable that we experience picks us up in the first days in our new home. We hardly realize what is happening and that it is already over.

Still jet-lagged, we jump at the shrill ringing of our mobile phones, which panic in chorus. All the Japanese networks broadcast an alert a few seconds – we can't do more – of a significant earthquake. Time to curse the unbearable ringtone, find his phone, and feel vaguely rolling like on a waterbed... the vibrations have passed.

In constant communication with friends in the neighborhood, the children confirm that there is indeed a tremor further on, felt even at home. We who relied on animal instinct to warn us of a catastrophe: our Jack Russel continues to search for his ball in the bushes with appalling indifference to what happened under his paws...

The second experience will be more lively. We are - still! - half asleep when there is absolute silence around the house, followed by a gust of wind, then this dull rumble, a noise that we don't know, that we can't compare to anything. And a primal fear feeling deep in our guts. This time, the terrified dog almost knocks my husband down and comes to lodge under the duvet where I am hidden, a strategy which fortunately does not appear in any guide.

The little one curls up with us, and our big one comes down moaning and looks for someone to blame because her books – astonishing egocentrism of adolescence – have fallen off her shelf. The reassuring beeps of messages from neighbors and friends gradually replace the shrill sound of the earthquake alert.

The man showers and shaves as if nothing had happened, assuring that he must go to the office for a press conference that has nothing to do with the earthquake. It hurts him to abandon his little family. He indeed savors a highway to himself, understanding that the flashing indications display the following message: "You proceed at your peril after the earthquake..." "You proceed at your peril after the earthquake...". Arrived at his work, no journalist is there: first because the shock of Osaka takes precedence over everything else, then because transport stops automatically, and finally, in the event of an earthquake, the national order is to...stay at home.

As for us, in Kobe, we come to our senses in front of the TV, which broadcasts in a loop the famous images which flicker near the epicenter. We comfort each other. Some feel like they've had a hundred espressos in a row because the experience has shaken them. Others, like me, are knocked out. Many are afraid.

In the afternoon, I decide to confront myself with this good old earth which we forget by dint of living in France that it is a living matter, that it moves, breathes, coughs... noisily and violently.

I join my famous river, headphones on, and I run.

Carpe Diem

I see only this solution, to feel my heart beating, to marry the ground with my feet, to lean based on the cows to retake the course of our life. And if it shakes again...? I'll see.

The endorphins take effect. Others like me run or walk along the water.

The Japanese don't dance on a volcano: they live on a fire ring. They do not have a choice. They know their islands are exposed to the wrath of the ocean and the soil. Some think that their country will one day vanish like a print; this is called Ikuyo, the consciousness of a fuzzy, fragile, uncertain world. Do they live each day like the last? I won't go that far, but aggressive nature has forged a Japanese "carpe diem."

To go further: The typhoon season in Japan