Day 23 - Disaster Museum

Today started out like any other, waking up, getting ready to go to class, actually going to class, and not doing much at all. But today wasn't just an ordinary school day, we had our first of three field trips in Japan. The place we were heading to was called the Disaster Museum, where we'd learn how to act in real life tragic-weather situations.

We travelled down the Chuo line (the line we catch every day to Ichigaya -school-) for the first time for about eight stops over and got off in a location unknown to all of us. When we got off we walked for about 15min and wound up at a building shaped like a pyramid. When we walked inside all we saw were images of disaster incidents and props lined up displaying the do's and do not's of disaster situations.

For the two and some hours we were there, we got to experience different real life situations. At first we watched a 3D movie displaying the tragic earthquake in Japan from years ago. Our first real life situation was standing in a rain tunnel wearing wet-dog-smelling rain jackets and having hurricane winds and rain thrown in our faces. Although we were told to be serious about all we do here, we all couldn't help but laugh and have a good time doing it.

Next we experienced what it'd be like in a building situation where a fire errupts and we'd have to evacuate quickly and safely. We crouched down into a dark hallway where smoke was all you could see. Covering our mouths with either a towel or your shirt -I used my several year old smelling hat- we made our way through this maze-looking floor and out the exit to 'safety'.

Following the smokey experience we tried our hands at putting out a simulation fire on a giant television screen with fire extinguishers filled with water. I was in the first group to go, and we weren't quite sure how it was going to commence. Well, apparently the longer you wait before you put out the fire, the longer it'll take to put it out. The four of us were standing in front of the screen smiling for the cameras and then noticed the fire was ablaze behind us. We turned around, and used our 30-second tanks to it's fullest and failed to put out the fire. The following two teams in our group were able to put out the fire within 15-seconds of the fire starting. Well, that just put us to shame because we weren't aware of how the simulation would work, and they didn't tell us when to begin.

Moving on to the next simulation, it was what we were all waiting for, the 'Jishin' or earthquake simulation. I realize at this time that I forgot to mention the fact that we didn't have a translator in our group, so not all of us fully understood what the lady was telling us to do. I could pick up key words and phrases and commands, but not quite all of it if you could guess. So being the first group again, the four of us stood in the simulator and she gave us a list of instructions. It included turning off the stove, watching out for falling objects, and opening up the door to exit safely. Well, we weren't quite sure how this was going to work so we figured we'll just wing it.

We waited until the worker turned the machine on, and so the floor started to rumble. A few seconds later, what felt like I was standing on top of a moving roller coaster, I was on the brink of falling down when the actual earthquake started. The four of us grabbed the pillows in front of us, put them over our heads, and immediately ducked under the table they provided for our 'real life' situation. It turns out that the earthquake we had just experienced would qualify as a 7 on the richter scale.

Later at night Clinton, Joy and I went to Roppangi, the crazy party town in Japan. It was a few stops over from Shinjuku station, and just bursting of life. Still within the station, we had to climb no less than about 5 or 6 very tall staircases just to exit (which makes me wonder just how deep underground the train was located). Once we were walking around the city, we noticed there was bar after bar, club after club, and restaurants in every which direction. There were also more people trying to get you to go to their clubs with flyers than I have ever seen before.

Looking at the different restaurants, we couldn't decide on where we'd want to eat. So we kept walking around until we felt hungry enough to just sit down where there were seats and have a good meal. Fortunately there were only three of us so finding a place to eat wasn't as hard as say with our normal 7+ person group. The first place we wanted to eat in looked really great, with a huge platter of meat you cook yourself for just about 1500yen. We walked into the store and we knew it had to be good because there were people filing the restaurant. We also knew that this was bad for us hungry kids who need a quick fix. With a 45min wait time we said thanks anyway and made our way to another place.

Where we ate had great food, for extremely reasonable prices. I had ordered a large bowl of ramen, fried rice, and gyoza as a set for less than 800yen. The food there was probably some of the best I've had, even though the restaurant wasn't as nice-looking as some of the others I've been to. After some good hearty food in our bellies we walked around the city some more seeing more of what Roppangi's night life had to offer. We saw more neon lights as the time went on promoting strip joints and night clubs and thought we'll come back another night with everyone accompanying us.

After a long day of excitement we went home and crashed soon after. The weather looks good for this weekend so hopefully I'll be doing something interesting then.