Section 76 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 November 16 Sunday.
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Today I went to an earthquake training session, which was pretty much the most useless piece of training I've ever endured in my life, although in the end I did succeed in getting a couple of things out of it.

We gathered at a designated street corner at 0930, about half a dozen of us. Then we headed for the local elementary school, following the banner held by our leader, a gentleman in (at a guess) his sixties, who was wearing a white helmet emblazoned with kanji proclaiming his association with the chōnaikai, the neighborhood committee.

Other groups, similarly led, trooped into the grounds of the elementary school and assembled on the stretch of sandy mud which serves the school as a playground. Altogether, there were three or four hundred people. A lot of these people were not quite sure where to line up and there were a number of bewildered adults shuffling around looking for their missing leaders.

An aberrant thought went through my head:

"If we're going to invade Iraq, we're going to have to get a little more organized than this!"

Anyway, by about 1000 we were all linked up in some semblance of order, and speeches were underway. I forget exactly when the speeches got going, but they didn't come to an end until about 1020, by which time I'd lost track of how many speeches there had been.

In Japan, it's pretty much impossible to start anything without some kind of ceremony. Even today, modern Japan is an intensely ceremonial society, so this succession of introductions and acknowledgements and exhortations did not surprise me in the least.

Then, at round about 1020, we were told we were free to break ranks and wander round the various displays until 1110. By this time the ceremonial aspects had chewed up about fifty percent of the earthquake training session.

What I wanted to see was the fire engines. I've never seen a Japanese fire engine in action, at least not close up. However, the four fire engines drawn up at one side of the elementary school, complete with fire crews, were there, apparently, purely for display purposes: they weren't actually going to do anything.

Somewhere there was, apparently, training in how to make a toilet. I didn't seek this out, because I've done enough camping to be confident of being able to excavate my own toilet if I have to. (The little lawn in front of the house would be a suitable place.)

Later, however, I learnt that the "make a toilet" session involved assembling a prefabricated portable toilet from big factory-made pieces which came in cardboard boxes ... not really the kind of improvisational skill which will help you get through the first hours after a big earthquake.

There was a session on using tools, but this involved watching experts turn a chain saw on and off (I didn't see them cut anything with it) and raise and lower a kind of hydraulic jack (and I didn't see them lift anything with that.)

So I drifted over to the school swimming pool, a greenish swamp afloat with autumn leaves, where there was a water purification session in progress. I thought this might perhaps involve learning how to use some kind of purification kit, but not a bit of it.

At the water purification session, some experts had set up some kind of complicated equipment into which they pumped dirty pool water, producing pure drinking water at the other end. This kind of "let's watch experts do stuff with complicated equipment we don't have and can't get our hands on" kind of approach did not strike me as particularly edifying.

So I went to have a look at the cooking, only to find that the cooking had been done in advance, pretty much. At the cooking corner, a bunch of volunteers were packing rice into rice balls ("onigiri").

True, someone had got a little campfire going inside the semicircle created by some kind of metal stove designed for simple outdoor cooking. A couple of mess tins were suspended above the flames and, presumably, something was cooking inside them. However, to make use of this cooking method, you would have to have that kind of manufactured metal stove.

(Which reminds me. I should find out where my gas camping stove has got to. If I do find myself without electric power in the aftermath of an earthquake, by far the most practical method of cooking anything is going to be to cook it in a saucepan over a portable gas stove.)

Finally, I drifted over to the crowd of people at the bandaging and stretcher session.

This was far and away the most popular training session, the others having, really, very little to offer, but it was hard to see what was going on, because there were too many people, all grouped round a fairly small number of instructors.

When I got to the bandaging and stretcher section, I saw stretcher drills in progress, and the first thought that went through my head was "But we don't have a stretcher!"

Then I saw that the stretchers had been improvised using blankets and long aluminium poles - the poles that pretty much everyone uses for hanging out their laundry. This was the very first useful insight that I gleaned at today's "jishin kunren".

Unfortunately, I'd arrived too late to see exactly how the blankets and poles were combined to make a stretcher ... still, it's a useful idea to tuck away in the back of my mind, particularly since there are three long aluminium poles sitting outside in our garden, supported by our laundry drying stands.

If you've ever carried anyone on a stretcher, you will know that it is brutally hard work, and the next useful thing I saw was a method for making this work easier.

Say you are holding the stretcher with your left hand. Imagine you drop a loop of rope over your head. One end of the loop rests on your right shoulder. The other end of the loop is at the level of your waist on your left side. Now you stick the pole of the stretcher through the lower end of the loop. Then, instead of supporting your share of the stretcher with just your left hand, you are able to use both your left hand and your shoulder.

However, as I just watched this being done, rather than doing it myself, I can't say how much of an improvement it is over the standard method of hands-only stretcher bearing.

Shortly thereafter I got involved in some actual hands-on knot-tying practice using ropes. We were taught (very quickly) how to tie a knot which will never come undone. And we were also taught how to make three quick loops in a rope then thread the long end of the rope through the loops to make (hey presto!) a rope puncutated with three knots suitable for using as handholds when climbing.

However, all this was done so quickly that I wasn't able to absorb what I was being taught ... it's difficult how to learn to tie a knot when you have twenty seconds for the learning experience, and when three different Japanese people are helpfully assisting you to tie the one trial knot that you have time to try tying.

Anyway. Suddenly it was 1110, and the training part of the training session was over, and it was onigiri time. We all streamed across the playground to the emergency ration dispensing point and got one rice ball each, hot and salty. (This is the first time, from memory, that I've ever eaten salty rice.)

We then lined up again in our ranks, had a couple more speeches (mercifully short) and then collected emergency rations to take home. Each emergency ration kit was a plastic bag containing a can of water, some dried bread, some crackers and that kind of stuff ... and a pair of white gloves.

Japanese people typically do not do manual labor with their bare hands. Instead, it's very common for white gloves to be worn. And, in the aftermath of a big earthquake, there's going to be a lot of manual labor to be done.

And, bearing our emergency rations, we all streamed out of the elementary school grounds and back to our ordinary lives ... a little bit better educated, perhaps, but not much.

Back home, I put the emergency rations in a small green backpack together with one of my two portable radios. My earthquake preparations now amount to:-

(a) emergency rations and radio are on hand, ready in the backpack to grab if we have to suddenly evacuate;

(b) a flashlight is also on hand, so if I am woken in the night by an earthquake it's just a matter of reaching out for the flashlight and turning it on; and

(c) there are two containers of water sitting in the garage, each holding twenty liters, a total of forty liters.

I should add some other stuff to the backpack, such as a raincoat and a roll of toilet paper. And I should also find that gas stove ....

Our weather today was extremely sunny and bright, with a strong autumn wind stripping away any pollution. In the afternoon, I laid my sleeping bag down on the lawn and dozed for a while in the sunshine. A very welcome experience. Washed by the radiance of the sky ....

I need that light, need a hit of that celestial brilliance ....

In this country, it's all too easy to forget what real light is like. Unfortunately, today's Japan is a nation where bad lighting has been raised to something like an art form. Degrading the lighting is seen as being virtuous, since it saves money (and the whole nation's pretty much broke) and since it's ecologically sensible (and we're none of us going to raise our voices against ecologically sound principles, are we?)

I spend far too much of my time in badly lit buildings or traveling in tunnels underground, and far too often I feel as if I'm submerged, trapped underwater in some place to which the light has difficulty penetrating.

Recently, after a long lapse - a lapse of over a year - I've resumed my running program. It isn't easy to find the time, but, when my schedule permits, I put on my running shoes and go running.

From a health point of view, I don't think I really need the exercise, since, on average, I'm walking about an hour a day getting from A to B. However, running definitely reduces stress, and it also gets me out in the sunlight.

Usually, though, even if the day is sunny the sky is gray. But today the sky was a pure and perfect blue ....