March 11, 2011

• Coming home 311

  On the day of the earthquake I was lucky enough to be able to walk the one train station home, but dreaded what I might find when I opened my 8th floor front door.  I had never experienced such shaking.  We had taken precautions and had props on all the tall furniture to keep it from falling over, but how well had they held?  Was I going to find that all of the ceramics that I had collected over a period of my three years in Fukuoka had been converted to shards?  And what about the teacup collection that included one from my grandmother?  I tried dwelling on the fact that all of my stuff is actually God's stuff anyway, so it is His responsibility to look after it.  God was very responsible!

  

  When I unlocked the door and got in, I found that the historical artifacts had fallen over into a more historically correct arrangement, but without the breakage.  The three figures that remain standing are wired to a pole behind the largest one.  Hubby thought this might be a good measure to take in case of an earthquake, and he was right!

   

  In my room some books had fallen on to the floor here and there, along with a lot of stuffed rabbits, but none of it was breakable, so there was no damage, only cleanup.

  

  The members of my Barbie collection were less than thrilled about the whole experience!

  

  This large vase was on the brink!  A couple of other smaller ones had taken a fall, but it was from a low shelf onto a soft rug, so they were undamaged as well.

  

  Now here was a problem that required some creativity to solve.  I cannot open the cupboard door without the dishes that are leaning against it falling.  (Duct tape is there out of panic - we were still having aftershocks and I did not know how bad they would be.  I did not want any of the doors shaken open while I was still trying to solve this problem.  I could open the door just enough to manage to slip a thin slat of wood in to push the dishes back onto the shelf.  "Next door" offered even more of a challenge!

   

  These were so close to the edge that there was no way to get anything in to push them back.  Those two white dishes are from Imari and they don't make them anymore.  They are pristeen and unbroken, that is, unless I open the door.  And that bunny hanging in the balance...  which do I want to try and catch on the way down, bunny or dishes?  OK, dishes.  I crack open the door and bunny falls.  I close it again and gaze at the yet unbroken dishes and decide to try to catch them, but to no avail.  I am just not that fast, and they go down, too, but are somehow not even chipped.  Bunny has also survived unscathed! 

   

  Now this cupboard did not fare so well.  We had devices to keep the doors from flying open attached above the doors, and two of them worked.  The one one the upper right side did not, and this is where we lost a few things.  A couple of hubby's sake cups from Kyushu suffered some, but they are not unrepairable.  This was our worst damage, so we were very lucky!  You can see more panic duct tape.  I left it up for a few days just in case.

  

  See the white prop between the cupboard and the ceiling?  We have these props on all of our taller furniture, and they probably saved us a lot of grief and loss.  After a major quake anywhere in the country these sell out for months.  According to a survey, only 20-30% of the households in our building have these installed.  See the parakeet perches?  Those are actually poles with tension springs that I just put up to keep dishes from sliding against the glass doors in the future.  I know that these saved the teacup collection that I had on another doorless shelf.  I have wrapped those cups up and put them away for awhile just for my own peace of mind.

  

  Here are some more "ounces of prevention."  There are more props on this cupboard along with some additional devices to keep doors from flying open again.  I probably don't need them, but they make me feel better.  I also checked our unused tension pole inventory, and now they have been put to use!

  All I have to say is if this is the extent of our damage, we are very lucky.  God takes good care of His stuff.

  • 01:03
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