My very personal earthquake weekend III

My earthquake friends and I went to a small café on the 2nd floor of the building in front of the gallery with the Sanne Sannes exhibition. We were their only customers, but I was already surprised that they were actually open. The two women running the place told us that - because of the earthquake - the gas was shut off, so they couldn't make certain things. But they had beer, so I was happy.

One of my earthquake friends went to look after her gallery, because she was worried about some fragile pieces in there. She was gone for a while.

In the meantime, the younger sister of the other earthquake friend arrived. The two young women obviously were very happy to see each other. The sister was working in Roppongi and as she couldn't call her older sister (still because of the missing cell phone reception), she decided to walk to Ebisu, where her sister's gallery was. She met a friend in the street and that's how she knew we would be in the café. 

The earth would still shake on and off. Sometimes it would be small aftershocks that we learned to ignore after a while. A couple of times they were a little stronger and the conversation would stop and people would look around, staring at the moving objects in the little place, like those hanging baskets above the counter:

Finally, the other earthquake friend came back from her gallery. She took so long because, as she was checking her pieces, a customer arrived in order to pick up something he had purchased. Apparently, he wasn't impressed by the earthquake at all and even had her pack the thing nicely. 

I will get back to this point later, but let me just point out that this is one of the examples of how life would be interrupted on the one hand, and on the other hand, there are those people, shops and companies who would just go on as before the earthquake.

Around six o'clock my earthquake friends wanted to go home. The two sisters show me the way to Meiji Dori, one of the main roads that would lead me back to Shinjuku.

And there were the things, that didn't go back to normal after the quake:

For example, at first, I was wondering why those people were standing in line:

You can still see in this picture that the line goes on around the corner of the parking lot. 

When I was passing the parking lot, I saw that it actually went all around this (fairly big) parking lot: 

As there were no trains running and not everybody had the luck to live in walking distance (which in my case meant a 2 hour walk), this, in fact, was the line for the taxis. 

Since, generally, the cell phones didn't work either, there were also long lines in front of the phone booths:

Because of the same reason, all of these people were in this shop of a big cell phone provider, trying to do something about the failing service. 

And there were many many people in the streets everywhere. 

But the amount of people in the area around Shibuya station, from where usually a lot of commuter trains leave, was very impressive:

I get to Harajuku and there is this weird contrast again. Some shops are open, like this shoe shop (with a lot of people inside)...

But a lot of shops are closed and still remind of the reasons for their closure. 

In this TopMen, the mannequins in the back tumbled down.

In this Forever21 the customers left their shopping bags at the entrance as the shop was evacuated:

Also in this store the display fell:

But on the other hand there were some Ramen Bars open and people standing in line outside in order to get dinner.

Before I leave Harajuku behind I try to call my friend Julia once more. In the morning we said we would go out in Shibuya that night but now I'm not sure whether that's still happening after the events of the day....

to be continued