A Trip to Japan
A Trip to Japan
It was May 16th, 1971. Me and my four best friends were waiting at the airport with luggage in our hands, impatiently.
Since we graduated, we decided to go on a trip to Japan because one of my friends Rie is Japanese. Their names are Vanessa, Rie , Luke and Jake. She showed us how beautiful her hometown is, the Ishigaki Island. When we saw the pictures, we fell in love with the place and decided to book plane tickets and go there for about two weeks.
We stayed at her parents' house so it was cheaper. The flight wasn't that long for me because I was tired from packing and fell asleep. When we arrived, Rie's parents picked us up from the airport and we went to their house. The house wasn't that big but it was perfect and it had everything we needed. Rie's parents welcomed us with an amazing traditional dinner. After talking and meeting the lovely old couple, we decided to go to sleep. We stayed there until May 30th so we had a lot of time. The first couple of days went by fast. We were meeting Rie's friends and spent a lot of time with her parents. We went to different places, met new people and those were one of the best moments in our lives.
We had a lot of plans for May 24th because it was the fourth anniversary of our friendship. It was a big day for us. I went to the nearest store I could find to buy groceries and on the way home I bought everyone a small gift and a friendship bracelet. And finally, the day came. We were all sitting on the couch, curled up in our blankets and opened our gifts, it was like Christmas time. Later, it was about one pm, we all sat at the table and started to eat.
As we were giving compliments to Rie's mom for making such amazing food, the glasses on the table started to shake. We all just stared at them until the realization hit us. We started to panic while the ground was shaking even more. Rie's father turned on the radio and we could hear a reporter telling us to hide in a safe, more suitable place because a deadly tsunami was approaching us. Thankfully, Rie's father knew these kind of situations and took us to a safer place. Some time later water was dripping from the ceiling and it was very uncomfortable. Some of us were already crying. It felt like forever. I thought to myself: ''Will this be the best trip in my life or a living nightmare?'' Rie's father was there to save us and we couldn't thank him enough. Later, we couldn't hear anything so we came to the surface. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. Everything was destroyed, people just standing there, clueless, with no hope, kids crying. And a couple of days later they informed us we had survived one of the deadliest tsunamis in Japan, the Great Yaeyamu Tsunami.
written by N.S.
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