I want to stand at the top of a mountain
And whisper before we are destroyed
“Keep going”

March 11, 2011 – Tokyo, Japan – Magnitude 6.6 Earthquake

This is it, I thought, this is what I have been waiting for—the bristle of reality to curl its bony fingers up my spine and puncture the reverie. No one knew how to react aside from a few squeezed murmurs of terror. The world was ending. The haze broke and I clutched the desk, waiting—waiting for pieces of sky to shatter at my feet. That was the first second, but then it got worse. I felt the tips of my hair touch the blade before it connected with my skull—the crushing weight of it all ending bearing down on my existence. … It was something… so strangely familiar. I remember taking a breath then and recalling that I could move. The sword never touched me—not even a thread of my clothing was severed. Our Japanese Social Problems professor had already bolted into the hallway, popping her head back in just to tell us to get out as fast as we could.

I had a conversation with myself then—in that brief half-second of decision before your body acts. As I hung halfway under my desk from a desperate attempt to save myself, I saw a mountain. It was baked in white snow, littered with frozen, brown sticks, staring straight back at me. My eyes drew clearer and a strange calm basked through my veins. Five seconds had passed. The room was nearly empty and my friend was trying to shove papers into his backpack. I was going to leave my things, but I had already stopped thinking.

Everything was moving, but it was slow. Chairs fell over, books thrashed off the shelves, I collided with the wall, but it kept going and so did I. By the time I reached the stairs from the third floor, hoards of people were already pouring down them, shrieking like an alarm clock telling me to wake up. I was alone as I dodged frantic college students, balancing on barely a single toe— like during irimiFront technique, entering, moving into and through the line of attack nage"Thrower"; defender; the person applying a technique. A dragon was coiling under the ground; we were standing on a sinking ship and getting seasick. I caught a girl with reaction time I didn’t know I had just before she slammed her head into the stone wall. It was so slow I thought I would never reach the bottom, but I wasn’t worried. The swaying building could have collapsed with me still descending the stairwell, but I was confident that I would make it somehow

Just as the earthquake had started, it vanished like a ripple. … I felt something that had killed nearly thirty-thousand people. Outside, we heard whispers of news from iPhones whose connection hadn’t been cut off yet, telling us that Sendai was destroyed and an aftershock was coming. I bought ice cream. After almost eight years of aikidoThe word "Aikido" is made up of three japanese characters: ai - harmony, ki - spirit, mind, or universal energy, do - the way. Thus Aikido is "the way of harmony with universal energy.", I bought ice cream from a convenience store and watched as people clung to poles, clutched their loved ones, and cleaved their hands together to pray to whatever they believed in. It was the same as after the first time I felt yonkyoFourth teaching, movement or principle; control of the opponent's center through his wrist, elbow and shoulder; I got up smiling.