Safe and Sound - Back from Japan

Thank you to those who have enquired as to my safety. I have honestly never had so many people concerned over my well-being! This evening my travel agent called me (from her home) to see if I got home OK. DFAT rang mum this morning to check (I registered with SmartTraveller.gov.au), and I returned home to 23 unread emails on my Yahoo account, many of which were of the 'are you ok' variety.

I am back in Australia after a very enjoyable 9 days in Japan. I mean that. I had a ball. I was not caught up in the earthquake drama - except for the final night at the hotel near the airport, which shaked, rattled and rolled about half a dozen times through the night from the aftershocks.

My travel schedule fortuitously had me leaving the country on the day I planned to leave, and on the flight I was booked on. I did not need to change any travel plans.

I was in Nara - about 6 hours by car, south of Tokyo - with a tour group when the quake and tsunami happened, and I never felt a thing. The first I heard of something was when I received a text message from mum.

I got back to the hotel in Kyoto that night to saturation coverage of what unfolded on 12 of the 13 channels.

In Kyoto, Shinkansen trains stopped running from the time of the quake until about 7.30pm that evening. I was due to get the Shinkansen back to Tokyo the next day, and my train duly left on time - to the minute - and arrived - to the minute. Of course, no one bats an eyelid when trains run to schedule, but when they run to schedule not even 24 hours after the biggest earthquake the country has ever seen, is just astonishing.

Once in Tokyo the drama started when I tried to get to my hotel at Narita - something which should, on public transport, take me about 1 hour. It ended up taking me four and-a-half hours - which I thought was appalling, until I mentioned this to an English guy checking in at the same hotel who said it took him eight hours! Trains were not running on all lines from Tokyo and many people walked for two and three hours just to get to public transport. Fortunately for me, I just waited (and waited) for the trains I needed..

On the way back to Australia, in the lounge in Singapore Airport, I read in the Weekend Australian words to the effect that the quake had caused destruction all over Japan. This is just heifer dust. In Kyoto, everything was perfectly normal. Trains and buses were running and people were going about their business in their usual happy, determined manner. You would not know anything was wrong.

Of course, many things are horribly devastated in northern Japan, and, in many cases, probably permanently so. It will take many years for things to return to normal.

This episode has not deterred me from returning to this amazing country.

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