The Wedding That Wasn't: Another Earthquake Story

Amidst all the confusion in the days immediately following the earthquake, I missed my regularly-scheduled hair appointment with Kumi. When I ought to have been sitting in Kumi's chair having goop dabbed on my roots, I was at the base movie theater watching Rango with Fearless and her girls. At the time we had no way of knowing that a week later Fearless and the twins would be waking up in Novi, Michigan, enroute to Arlington, Virginia.

So I absolutely do not regret missing that hair appointment. And I also do not regret shelling out $3 to see Rango when only a few days later our movie theaters stopped charging admission.

But missing that hair appointment became increasingly troublesome as the week progressed. As fears of irradiation mounted, I realized that the sudden appearance of a white stripe across the top of my head could very well tip the balance on this base from low-grade panic to mass hysteria. I didn't want to be responsible for causing a run on potassium iodide that would make the hospital pharmacy look like the bank in It's A Wonderful Life. I needed to reschedule that appointment pronto.

Erin and her three little boys marched off to the Navy Exchange to make an appointment for me. (In my defense, she looked ready to wring their collective necks; the schools here closed with no warning, all child-friendly activities on base were cancelled, and they needed some sort of distraction. At least that's how I've decided to spin this.) Erin managed to get me the first appointment on Sunday morning. I believe my appointment was the only one on Kumi's schedule that day. Kumi normally has a month-long waiting list. This is what we call "a silver lining".

Kumi is always glad to see me -- our relationship has spanned three years at this point, which is about a year longer than my relationship with any other hairdresser in the past twenty years -- but she seemed genuinely delighted to see me this past Sunday. And I her. I was eager to hear her "earthquake story" so that I would have something interesting to share with you that did not involve military ineptitude. We all need a break from that.

Kumi was on her way to her niece's wedding in Tokyo when the earthquake happened. She was wearing a dress (remarkable enough for her to mention and remarkable enough for me to pass along) and riding a Keikyu train when the ground started shaking. The train came to a halt in the Kamiooka station, the home of Beard Papa's cream puffs and Takano fruit parfaits. If I had to choose a place to be stuck for nine hours, the Kamiooka station would be at the top of my list.

But Kumi wasn't thinking about sweets. She had a wedding to attend. So she and most of the other passengers stayed on the train for about a half hour until an announcement informed them that service had been halted for the day. She eventually managed to reach her sister and niece by cell phone (service was disrupted for about a half hour) and learned that the wedding party was unable to get to the ceremony site. The wedding would have to be postponed.

Kumi then joined a long line of stranded train passengers in the taxi queue. There were only two taxicabs serving the Kamiooka station. Kumi waited nine hours until it was her turn to climb into a cab that would take her home to Yokosuka.

Nine hours is a long time. It was about midnight by the time she got a cab. She was very hungry and had some food in her tote bag but there were many elderly people in that queue with her and she did not have enough food to share with everyone. So she pretended she didn't have any food and just went hungry along with everyone else.

Her sister and niece spent the past week in the Tokyo apartment the bride and groom had planned to live in as newlyweds. Her sister is from Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture (where we saw the plum blossoms last month) and she must return to work in Mito or risk losing her job. Bus service between Tokyo and Mito has been restored in the past couple of days but Kumi says her sister is very afraid to return to Mito since that would put her closer to the nuclear plants.

I don't know how this will all turn out but I made another appointment with Kumi for April 10 and I will get the next installment then. Simply being allowed to make another appointment filled me with an enormous sense of relief. It's interesting how we all have different priorities, isn't it?