Exactly one month ago today, photographer Patrick Tsai was living in Tokyo and felt the tumultuous aftershocks of the earthquake that took place 230 miles north-east of the city and killed an estimated 28,000 people. Soon after, he began a diary documenting the immediate aftermath of the quake, about people living in Tokyo and the radiation scare that followed – and continues still.
Evolving from an account of personal crisis reflected in natural disaster, it’s become a comment on the life-goes-on mentality that follows such unimaginable upheaval.
The Talking Barnacles blog is unashamedly honest and completely human; it captures the insistence that accompanies the survival of a natural disaster – that, at some point, normality must prevail, no matter the guilt you feel in trying to make it. But it also questions the return to living after such a crisis – how can an entire nation return to working, sleeping, walking and eating after such destruction, but also, how can they not?
Patrick has kindly allowed us to use some of the pictures he’s taken in the last couple of weeks alongside the text from his blog, which follows below. To read the blog in its entirety from the beginning, go here. To donate to the Japan Tsunami Appeal fund, click here.
photo ©Patrick Tsai
Day 3: Sunday, March 13, 2011
I woke up by another aftershock. Lying there, I tried to think of what I had to do that day, but I couldn’t think of anything, which left me feeling useless and lost.
In the afternoon, I met my ex-girlfriend for lunch at a restaurant. We immediately talked about how good it was to get out of the house and away from the TV. A few minutes later, another couple was seated next to us and had the exact same conversation. This is one of the rare times when 39 million people are all thinking about the same thing.
While we ate, I also kept thinking about how useless art is at times like these. I asked my ex if she could think of something, and she weakly replied, “I don’t know… For therapy?” That sounded nice, but I didn’t really believe it.
At home, another friend came over and told me that besides meat and bread, all the staple foods were now sold out at the supermarkets. He then ranted about how people were hoarding everything, which was selfish to others. Later we heard that in the next three days another big quake was supposed to hit. I seriously began to worry for the first time.
Two friends are leaving for Australia tomorrow, one friend is going to Hong Kong, and another is going to Korea to get away… I understand why my foreigner friends are doing this, but it leaves me feeling pissed off that they can take off so easily and abandon everyone in Tokyo. It’s like the privileged business people with hard hats all over again.
I called my mom in the evening to let her know that I was okay and because I was secretly feeling sad. She said she was glad that I was fine, but couldn’t talk because she had to catch a flight to Palm Springs to watch a tennis match.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
I lost my job yesterday. I want to blame it on the quake, but my company assured me that it had nothing to do with it; Tokyo, financially, was already having hard times to begin with.
After writing my follow-up post about 7 Days on March 22nd, I started wondering if I was wrong. In the wake of what has happened to Japan and the radioactive threat already in Tokyo, maybe just continuing what you are doing is the cowardly thing to do…
During the first week after the quake, even with all the stress and the fear of what was going on at the time, in a way, I felt relieved. I felt relieved because I didn’t have to worry about having a real career, money, and my future which has been plaguing and haunting me everyday for the past who knows how many years; but what I had to worry about was the now, survival, and my friends. In a way, I felt pretty good. But after we escaped Tokyo and had a couple days rest in the southern island of Kyushu, I got an email from my dad entitled with his favorite line, which is definitely my least favorite of all:
“What are your plans?”
I didn’t have any… because I sadly never do. I was just going where the nuclear tide was taking me, and since nothing was really developing at the plant in Fukushima, and that Yuki, my roommate, would probably have to go back to work after the weekend was over, it seemed like we would have to go back to Tokyo and try to live to our normal lives again, which meant me going back to doing photography on my free time while continuing with my stale, old day job that has absolutely no future whatsoever.
But… it’s easy. It’s much easier just to continue that life even with the rumor of one day puking out black blood from radiation (worse case scenario) then actually figuring out a new one. Therefore, I am sure that losing this job is a blessing in disguise because I would have never been able to figure out what I needed or wanted out of life unless I was really pushed. But since finding the same kind of job, which I have been doing forever, is so easy to come by, I doubt that I have the strength to let myself be pushed.
Now the question in front of me, which is actually the same one for everyone else in Tokyo, who were unsatisfied with their lives before the quake, is do we have the courage to get up and change our lives because finally we have a legitimate reason to do it, which – I’m sure that the Japanese government would never admit to- is that Tokyo is probably a damn dangerous place to be right now and will be for a long time.
So far, from the way people are acting in Tokyo and how I am cruising through jobsinjapan.com while I write this, I seriously fucking doubt it.
photo ©Patrick Tsai
