＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
7:58 AM, June 18th, 2018… I will never forget this date and time.
At the time, I was sitting on a JR commuter train heading to Osaka, reading a paperback book.
Suddenly, we felt a strong bang and the train came to an abrupt halt (emergency stop).
At the same time, the familiar “Earthquake Early Warning” sound rang out from many people’s smartphones.
I turned off my smartphone on the train so I listened to what the other passengers were saying.
Suddenly, people started to get abuzz with comments like, “It seems like there’s something terrible happening in front of the city hall,” “Is everyone at home okay?” and people checking with their families to see if they were safe, and others immediately contacting their companies to report the situation.
The shaking from this earthquake only lasted for a very short time, so I didn’t panic too much, and perhaps because I was with a lot of people, I was able to remain surprisingly calm.
2. JR’s response lacks consideration for passengers
After a while, the conductor announced, “We have detected strong earthquake shaking and have made an emergency stop of the train. All trains are currently stopped. We are waiting for instructions from headquarters, so please wait a moment.”
I also turned on my smartphone and tried to call my wife several times, but I couldn’t get through at all.
I later heard that for a while after the earthquake, it was extremely difficult to get through to calls in the Osaka area.
However, LINE seemed to connect smoothly, so the people who were talking on the train were probably using LINE.
The train stopped about 100 meters before Suita Station, so I was optimistic that it would quickly move at the slowest speed to the nearest Suita station and then let all the passengers off.
However, two hours later, the situation hadn’t changed at all, and I began to feel anxious about when I would ever be able to get off the train.
Before long, the worries about toilets (both peeing and defecation) became real.
Some passengers shouted, “Let me off!” and repeatedly banged on the train windows.
Either someone had pressed the emergency button or they had heard a loud noise knocking on the window, and the conductor came running over to try and calm the person down, but I felt just as anxious as this passenger.
After two hours and 15 minutes, all the passengers were finally able to get off the train using a ladder and walk along the tracks to the nearest Suita station.
However, the slowness and poor response from JR left me a little dissatisfied.