Towards The End Part Ten

We drove through Aobadouri street to the Sendai International Center in Aoba-ku. We spotted max from the window almost right away when we drove to the parking lot. We ran inside to see him. We could see it from his face that he wasn’t expecting us and that he was really happy to see us. He had no idea that we were coming to see him. I thought it was kind of weirde, since the company had informed me that Max would be there.

He told us that he had stayed the night at school and that he had made new friends there. I remember him telling us about this one boy who was totally amazed that Max could speak so many languages. The next day apparently the shuttle bus had taken him finally home and he had stayed there for two days doing pretty much nothing at all. He had no idea how big the earthquake had been before he had come to the International Center. He had got reception at about 2 p.m., that was about 2 hours before the exchange student company contacted me. He had also heard that the German embassy was getting all the Germans out of Sendai and some other foreigners came to take the same bus. I was thinking that why hadn’t the dorm people taken Max with them? It must have been weird for him to be alone there with people he didn’t know at all.

We went to talk to this old lady who was the one arranging the bus rides from Sendai to Tokyo. I tried to explain to her with my Japanese skills that I had been promised a place on that bus by EF. Max explained to her in German who we were and where we were going, because she obviosly didn’t understand what I was saying. She wanted to see our passports and I said to her that I didn’t have my passport that I had left it at my house. She said to me that with no passport I was not getting on the bus. I started explaining that I still had my Gaijin Card (Japanese ID for foreigners) that wasn’t that enough? She said that she would need my passport. I was freaking out and I didn’t know what was going on anymore. Ayelet asked her if Tsitika, Chayse and Bill could ride the bus too and they handed their passports to her and she arranged everything so they would be able to ride the bus too.

I started crying and kept saying the words ”I can’t go home” all over again. Chayse and Tsitika were trying to comfort me but it didn’t help. One German girl came to ask if I was okay and Tsitika said to her in Japanese that I forgot my passport. I said to Tsitika that the German girl can speak English so why was she speaking Japanese? Chayse started to laugh. The German girl said that surely there must be a way for me to get on the bus, that they weren’t just gonna leave us there.

Ayelet said with a loud voice something about contacting the Finnish embassy. Then one woman stood up and  asked ”Who here was from Finland?”Ayelet pointed at me and the lady knelt in front of me. She asked what was my name in Finnish and I told her. It was really weird to speak Finnish after all that time. Well of course I had been talking with my mother in Finnish but not face to to face. It was kind of hard and I kept mixing some English words in my sentences.

The lady asked me when was the last time I was in contact with the Finnish embassy and I told her that never. I had never actually spoken to them because the company had arranged pretty much everything for me. She told her husband to call the Finnish Embassy right away. He handed me the phone and a lady answered it. I explained to her that they would not let me ride the bus and that I was told that the Finnish embassy and the German embassy had made a deal that I would get on that bus no matter what. 

The lady told me that they are going to send a fax to the German embassy to request that I get on that bus. She told me to call the embassy after a while and gave me the number. I called my mother almost right away to explain to her what had happened and she told me to calm down about it and that the bus was not going to leave without me. If they had promised me a place on that bus they wouldn’t just leave me. I was underage afterall.

I went to talk to the Finnish lady who had helped me before. She told me that her husband was a university teacher in Sendai and they were wondering if they should have left Japan after the first earthquake on Wednesday but they waited too long and the when the earthquake on friday hit they wanted to go home immediately. As soon as they got reception they had called the Finnish embassy that they wanted to return and the embassy informed them about the German embassy bus leaving from the Sendai International center.

We were finally going to go home I thought. We decided to take a picture together so that our parents could see that we were waiting for the busses. Ayelet was going to post it on facebook. I found the Croatian flag, that Domagoj had given me before he left, in my bag so we took the picture with it for the Croatian JEC students to see that we were fine and we missed them. I was so happy that they didn’t have to experience all this.

We all got to talk with Ayano on the phone. As soon as I heard her voice I started crying. She was crying too, I could hear her voice shake. I didn’t want to say goodbye to her. Not like that. I loved Ayano like a sister and I wasn’t going to see her in a very long time. It was devastating, but I had to say my goodbyes to her. I told her that I loved her and that I would miss her very much. We had had plans that when I came back to Japan we would live all together, but now I was too scared to even think about moving back.

We also got a text message from Rika telling us goodbye and telling that she didn’t want us to go either. Chayse let us all write a short message to her with his phone. We were all kind of broken after everything that had happened and we needed to be together. 

This was going to be the last bus ride together.

Towards The End Part Nine

Somebody screamed my name from outside. I went outside to see what was happening and the teacher told me that somebody was calling me. I answered the phone and it was somebody from the exchange student company. The woman said that they had been trying to reach me the whole weekend. She sounded so relieved when se heard my voice. I though it would be hard to communicate since she was talking in Japanese but I did just fine until she asked where I was. With my language skill I could only tell her that I was at our schools dormitory so I gave to phone to one of my teachers and he explained to her the exact location of the place. The teacher handed the phone to me and asked if I wanted to get on that bus which was going to take me and Max safely to Tokyo and I said yes. Ayelet told me to ask her if the others could have taken the bus with me so I handed the phone to Ayelet and she spoke to them. They didn’t know if it was possible for them to go but it was worth the try. We would go there together and see if we could all get on that bus. 

We were in a hurry. I told Ayelet that we had to go first to my house to get my passport since I had left it there. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. When I packed all my other important stuff, I didn’t remember to pack my passport which was probably the most important thing I owned. Ayelet said that we couldn’t take the risk of missing the bus if we went to get my passport. I said that I can’t get home if I don’t have my passport, but Chayse interrupted me and said that it would be okay even if I didn’t have my passport. He said that I would be sent home even without it. I calmed down about it.

We packed all of our stuff and started saying goodbye to people. I thought that all had happened too soon. I didn’t know how to react so I just started crying again. I wasn’t ready to leave them all. ”What if my friends can’t get on the bus?” I thought. I was freaking out. Everything was happening too fast. 

I remember hugging Kou-san who had come to visit us and she was crying a lot. I hugged Li, Monkey and Mole too even though we weren’t that good friends. It was really hard to say goodbye to Bai and especially to Zou who I was used to seeing everyday at  school. Zou was one of my best friends and I didn’t want to say goodbye to him, but I had to. Then there was Koshien... I don’t know what happened there but I kind of felt that he was extremely sad that I was leaving. He was looking at me with those sad sad eyes and I just didn’t know what to do. I was lost. I hugged him quickly and he took my bag and escorted me to the car. His sad eyes were still staring at me and felt like I needed to leave quickly so I wouldn’t stay just because of his sad eyes. 

I felt like my heart was breaking so I kept crying the whole time. Once we got in the car I finally calmed down a little bit. We were sitting in the car with Ayelet and Shin on the front and with me, Bill, Chayse and Tsitika in the back. We started to drive away from the dorms but we heard a really weird sound coming from the car. We were too heavy, the car couldn’t take us all. We just drove back to the dorms and asked if we could get another driver to take us the student’s and Ayelet and Shin would lead the way to the place that we were going. 

I got on the front seat of the car and Bill came to say to me that the teacher had said to him that he could sit in the front. I said to him that it was because of me that we were getting out so I would sit in the front. I really just wanted to sit in the front because I was bigger that everybody else and it wouldn’t have been really comfortable to the others to sit with me in the back. Before we left Mou came to say goodbye to us and he wished us luck. I checked the side mirror of the car and looked back to the others that were watching us leave. I was hoping that they all would get home safely from there. I especially hoped that for Zou and Bai. We were just sitting in the car and the tv was on. It kept showing the same commercial over and over again and it was annoying me. I asked the others what was going on with that commercial. Tsitika said that it was probably just telling us to help each other since it was showing people helping others climb the stairs and giving the seat to an elderly. We were wondering around Sendai and this time we could actually see the damage. The city was deserted exactly like in I Am Legend. The Sendai station was empty and covered with something, I didn’t know what it was. It was getting dark and we were almost there.