As you may or may not know, in the past couple days North Korea has been lobbing missiles into the air. I didn't know this until my phone started freaking out and sirens started going off. I later found out they had in fact launched 23 missiles the previous day and three more on the morning in question, yesterday morning (at the time of writing this).
My day started as most of my mornings do, with my duck quack alarm going off. However, it was a holiday (文化の日、Culture Day) so I didn't have to go to work. Since I didn't actually have to get ready for work, I was enjoying my nice warm futon (highly recommend a wool futon for those in cold areas) when I heard my phone start going off again. At first I thought I must have turned on my one non duck alarm accidentally, but quickly realized that can't possibly be the case because that's my 6:30am alarm and this must be a disaster alert. Given the sunny weather I assumed it was an earthquake warning, but when I flipped over my phone I saw the fateful word "ミサイル," missile.
Now, as strange as it might sound, this actually isn't my first time in Japan during a missile alert. During my first study abroad in 2017, North Korea launched a missile into the Sea of Japan the same weekend I went to the beach and sent another missile over Japan the day after I left. They even sent a missile over Hokkaido and Aomori last month. While this is of course bad, it isn't terribly out of the ordinary. However, I was not prepared for the missile sirens to start going off. That very quickly takes it from "oh yeah there's an alert" to "am I going to die?"
In the panic from seeing the alert and the missile sirens going off, I immediately turned on the TV to get more information. I received the advice "if there is ever a disaster, turn on the TV or radio. NHK will have English announcements once the translator arrives." Also thanks to the app promoted to us during orientation one year ago, I got nearly instantaneous translations of the alerts, which was really helpful because all I could understand from the initial alert and siren announcements was "missile."
Now, you may be confused about the missile sirens, as that isn't something America really has. Japan has random speakers around towns, usually at the train station and scattered around elsewhere. Every city has a unique song for 5pm, which I heard is to tell children to go home. My town also plays bells at 6:30am and 11:30am. However, in addition to this, most houses in my area have an announcement system in the house. Apparently this is just my area, most likely a result of an older population who don't use smartphones but still need to be reached in case of an emergency, as was the case yesterday. However, this does have the unfortunate result of missile (or earthquake) sirens in your house.
In the panic of missile sirens and hearing "missile (verb I don't know)" over and over again I called a Japanese friend to get a translation of what was happening. Given that I had three pieces of technology freaking out and no knowledge of the action of the missile, the severity of the situation was somewhat unknown to me. Like is that verb "incoming"? "Suspected"? "Flying over?" "Warning"? "Alert"? Turns out the verb, 発射, means "launched," which I guess doesn't really help you feel better about the situation but does help with knowing how imminent things are. Apparently the recommended course of action is to take shelter in a building. While I don't think my not even insulated house is going to do much against a missile, probably best to stay indoors and not go to the evacuation point (the school, a large concrete building). As you can see from the emergency alerts, the sirens went off for the better part of ten minutes, even after the all clear was announced. You can mute the system but in my still frazzled state it took me a few tries to successfully turn off the missile sirens.
Missile sirens isn't something most Americans have any experience with. There has been little foreign attack on American soil since its introduction as a country, so to an American it is simply an exciting and common plot point in movies or books. Despite attack or invasion being a popular plot point, the reality of it outside the US is much scarier. America has a big ocean and a big military between it and any country wanting to attack (I don't think Mexico or Canada wants to pick a fight with the good ol' US of A). In Japan, not only do we not have nearly as robust of a military, but also share an ocean border with North Korea and other less than friendly countries (Russian military boats have been going around Japan lately too). Not only that, it's not that big of an ocean, so if we get an alert about a North Korean missile, we only have a few minutes until it arrives. Given North Korea's tendency to launch missiles and general lack of resources as a country, I have to hope they won't mess up their missile or calculations and accidentally hit Japan. That is not a country you want to have to put your trust in, but unfortunately that is pretty much all you can do while the sirens are going off.
I hope no more of my mornings start with "I don't want to die alone."
In light of my experiences with disasters in Japan, I highly, HIGHLY recommend any person coming to or in Japan to download the Safety Tips app. It will give you alerts for every single kind of emergency, flow charts of what to do, safety information, links to any place you might need, first aid tips, how to call emergency services, translations of helpful phrases, and much more. It is available for both Apple and Android phones.
This weekend I'm going to beef up my emergency kit. I already have a small backpack with some basics in it, but I'm going to make a more complete kit in light of recent events. Hopefully I never have to use it. On a funny side note, an official emergency preparedness booklet I received said to put chocolate in your emergency kit. Don't have to tell me twice!
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