If I tell you a story, can you forgive me for not updating?
A week ago, I had an eye injury (something got in my eye and scraped it up while I was sleeping). It hurt a lot, so I biked to my local optometrist, whom I hadn’t seen since my yearly check up last December. It turned out that they had went out of business. (ｏ´_｀ｏ)ﾊｧ･･･
Actually, my eye wasn’t that bad looking. It just hurt quite a bit. As my eyes are very precious to me, I had it checked out, though. The optometrist told me that it wasn’t serious, and gave me some antibiotics and other medicine.
Apparently, me, who has no allergies other than hayfever (which is hitting REALLY hard right now), is allergic to whatever is in there. It made my eye swell up and seem like it’s melting! Of course, since I was a retard, I’d decided to put it in my other eye too. It turned as red as a tomato and hurt like crazy.
So I quit the medicine, and decided that if it hadn’t improved overnight, I’d go back to the doctor.
Luckily, it improved! One eye almost entirely cleared up, and the other, red one (the one without the original injury), stopped hurting. That was four days ago. I stopped the eye medicine entirely, and both of my eyes are almost back to normal.
But, damn. It was scary. Not to mention that I had to get my photo taken with that horrible, painful red eye, and I also had two parties to go to. I’ll say one thing, though:
At least wearing sunglasses indoors at night made me look cool! Or, stupid… but sunglasses were better than scaring everyone with my demon eyes. XD;
But anyways… Saturday, I had two parties to go to (A cosmetics convention, and then a mangaka party afterward). I didn’t get to bed until 1 am, and then at 5:30, something really, really loud woke me up.
I was really sleepy and groggy, and to be honest, usually I tune out sirens. I live right on a big road, so I hear sirens every day from passing fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. They come by at any time of the night, so I just generally don’t notice them anymore. However.
However. This time it woke me up.
No surprise, though, because it was outside. As in, right outside my house.
It’s literally freezing cold in Japan these days, so I had the windows closed, and after a few moments of listening to the sirens, I heard voices overlapping. Really, really loud announcements.
I thought they said, “tsunami” Tsunami is coming!”
Um.. with all we have been through this year in earthquakes, and the huge tsunami up North last March, that’s probably why. There’s also been an unusual number of earthquakes in the early morning recently. I felt my body go frigid. I technically live in Yokohama city, which is a famous trading port, I live really far inland. It takes an hour on the train to get to the water. I also live on a highish elevation. Even a giant tsunami would never hit here. Or, so I thought. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure. But I live at the foot of a bunch of hills, so I have the plan that if there ever is a tsunami warning, I will go immediately to the top of the hill behind my house.
I really couldn’t believe it, but I packed up my DSLR camera, ipad, iphone, laptop, and wallet (my priorities are on straight). I put on my warmest jacket. Then I decided to open the window to assess the situation before I left.
Oh. It wasn’t a tsunami. It was a fire. The word for tsunami and fire (kaji) aren’t similar, but I immediately both relaxed and tensed up.
You see, this is what I saw when I opened the window (I took the video on my iphone from my apartment’s main window):
The house behind me was on fire.
No tsunami. But awful nonetheless.
The firemen were shouting a lot of things, but mostly, “Is there anybody in there?”
The house that is basically in my backyard (about 10 meters from mine) had a small clothing store on the ground floor, and two small apartments on the top floor. I didn’t know it at the time, but the person who lives in the left apartment had noticed the fire and evacuated, but the person in the right apartment, where the fire had originated, had not made it. Actually, from their shouts, which eventually gave way to other orders, it sounded like they’d never heard anyone make any noises. So he was probably already gone. Hopefully, he went in his sleep from smoke or something rather than burning alive. I think that was the case, since he never opened the door or anything and it was a very small apartment.
Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures, wondering if I should leave or not. They firemen weren’t evacuating us in our apartments, so I figured that it would be best for the moment to stay inside and monitor things in case they got worse.
There was just a lot of smoke at first,
Finally, it seemed that they managed to find a person.
I didn’t know for sure, but had a feeling that the dark, unmoving shape was not a living person. I found out later that he didn’t make it.
And then suddenly, whoosh! There was no boom, but flames suddenly appeared and reached up high. They were starting to fall on my apartment building.
At this point, I evacuated myself and stood in the parking lot, out of the way, with some of the other neighbors. After a while, the firemen asked if everyone was out of the apartments, and we helped bang on the doors to get others out.
We all stood outside as they got the fire under control.
The building on the right, that is where I live.
I wasn’t sure if it was okay, but it seemed like the fire was out eventually, and so I went back inside. I fell asleep listening to the sounds of firemen breaking apart the roof of the house next door to make sure everything was out.
A few hours later, I woke up and watched them for a little while.
Hole in the roof where fire had whipped out.
Firemen standing around in the early morning (around 10am).
From my window.
You can’t tell so much from the back (even less from the front), but you can surmise from the fire that the interior was completely destroyed. When I went by on the way to karate around noon, there were still firemen inside, probably trying to determine the cause.
I wonder what it was. Was it a cigarette, or a futon getting too close to a space heater? Was it possibly arson? Maybe the old man was too tired of life, and decided that this was the easiest way to end his suffering?
I hope it wasn’t the latter. This kind of fire came really close to me, but it’s not something that is going to end up in the news. Not in a huge city like Tokyo. But, the air still carries the smell of smoke, which I notice every time that I open my windows. I won’t forget it anytime soon.
Well, there’s also the burned-out house. A fitting reminder.
I’ll get some more photos if I can.. after I get back to normal life. My eyes, at least, are almost completely healed, and my hayfever is being held at bay through hard medicine. So, things are not at all bad!
Have you ever been in or near a house fire? Tell me about it in the comments! This was my first time coming this close, that I can remember. It’s a powerful reminder of the frailty of life.
Now going to finish those commissions! Hopefully I can get them almost all done today. Ganbarimasu.
I’m glad you stepped up and helped check the apartments for people. Much in the yay! *hugs!* <3
Last holiday season the house behind where i was living caught on fire, i got yelled at for running out in my pj's, after calling 911, to go make sure everyone was out. @_@ Four kids, two parents and one huge arse dog. XD Everyone was okay, but thanks to do-it-yourself housebuilders who didn't know what they were doing, they'd fixed the house up so it lit off not once, but twice. Thank goodness everyone was safe. I got to go help evacuate the neighborhood and stay with the big dog and a sweetie of a 89 year old neighbor. She just stayed attached to my arm and kept asking if it was okay for her to just stick with me until things settled. XD
…and the apartment building next to where i am now lit off, but it wasn't too bad, and the fire dept responded really fast.
Haha… XD! Since i don't spazz about helping out in things like that i recently joined a volunteer firefighting team. Funfun. XD! *hugs!!!*
I lived in a row house (all of the roofs were connected) when I was little. One night my parents whisked me out of bed because a house down the row was on fire. It was very confusing to me at such a young age. It became more real to me years later as my mum had kept the coat she was wearing that night. It was her favorite despite the singed holes from the embers of the fire. Years after my family had moved out, that house burned completely beyond repair.
When I lived in Kanagawa, there was an arson loose in our city. On my walk home from the train station, there was a large hill overlooking the roofs below. One evening I saw a blaze as I was returning home. I could hear the sirens coming near so I stood there, certain it was my apartment that was on fire. Luckily, it was not my apartment and despite the dark smoke and flames, the apartment that had caught fire was only minimally damaged and everyone was safe.
I hope you’re doing okay after such a dramatic event. Take care!
(hrmmm.. I don’t know if my comment was submitted or not.. got some kind of a failure D: hate it when I have to write comments twice (;_; ) if it worked, just delete this one, thanks haha )
That’s sooooooooooooooo scary! (;A; ) Sad that the man didn’t make it.. really sad (;_; ) urgh.. really scary! I really would have been freaked out by the time of the fire! But I’m glad that the fire didn’t spread! Would have been a disaster!
But anyway, still scary >__<;
I'm happy to hear that your eye has healed! Must have been really unpleasant!
Btw I will be staying in Shinjuku. About a 15 min walk from Shinjuku Station away
and wow! 5. August! Our birthdays really aren't far apart!
Wooow! That’s sooo scray! (;A; ) Sad that the one person didn’t make it (;_; ) I really would have been freaking out the time of the fire! But I’m glad that the fire didn’t spread and that they got it under control!
… fire.. so scary (.__. )
I’m happy to hear that your eye has healed! ^_^v
I’ll btw be staying in Shinjuku about 15 min walk from Shinjuku Station. Oh wow 5. August? That’s really not far from my Birthday!
I really hope the man died from smoke inhalation. Death by being burned alive is just too cruel.
Glad to hear that the surrounding neighbors and buildings were unaffected.
I’m so glad you’re safe Jamie. I remember clearly was when we were vacationing in my aunt’s house in California, my uncle’s old car was on fire and suddenly we had some firemen and a truck outside. The cause was probably a cigarette someone flicked away without stomping on it. And our store was burned down last year. We believe that was arson. A few close calls were on New Year’s Eve for a few years because of people’s fireworks.
It is sad that person couldn’t make it…
For a moment that relates to fires… We have wood stoves. The house was close to being on fire once but was quickly taken out thanks to fast reactions and a large container of drinking water. The mess was cleaned and then we continued our lives…
I’m also really glad you’re okay! I myself have never experienced such a thing, but I know some people who have. In fact, an old classmate of mine, fairly recently, lost everything in a fire. She and her family’s okay, but it’s just so scary to see things like this happen. I’m so sorry to hear about the old gentleman. I just hope he didn’t go painfully.
Wow, scary on both counts… I’ve never had experience with a fire, and I hope I never will since we have 4 cats to evacuate. But I once had a similar problem with my eye. The white part was squishy and “spilled” out over my eyelid, which really freaked me out and I insisted I go to the emergency room even though it was the middle of the night. My eyes are also very precious to me after all (can’t read manga without them!). They said something I was allergic to got into my eye, gave me some antihistamines, and it went away.
OMG! Glad you’re okay Jamie! That’s so sad about the person who died. Keep us updated if they ever find out the cause.
Good thing it didnt reach your building. I had a fire too and is why I hate cigarettes even more then I did before. A lady fell alsleep with a cigarette in her hand and her stove cooking food. So Everything caught thank goodness my family live on the bottom and we could get out easier and we didnt lose anything important (just minor stuff like game stations) but it was scary and there were animals running around (my forest near my arpartment had a lot of animal) luckily no one died. One lady did have to jump from the 3rd floor and shattered her legs but is healthly again. That apartment took like a year to fix but we moved to our own house. but man was it scary
OMG! That is so scary! But at least your apartment didn’t catch on fire from the flames jumping.
And I’m with you, hopefully the person died in his sleep and didn’t get burned alive. I think that’s one of my worse fears; being burned alive >..<
*hugs* I also want to say thanks for the drawing you sent me! I went home for Thanksgiving last week and I saw it!
Thank you <3
Whoa, I am glad you and your neighbors in the unaffected buildings came out okay…though it is sad to read about the one that didn’t make it, and to see property just go up does serve as a great reminder that nothing is permanent!
When I was younger, there was a house about three buildings down from the apartment where my family and I lived, and we all stepped out and watched as this building burned and the fire extinguished by the fire department. It was that night my mother told me what I should be taking in case of an emergency: hard-to-replace documents and identification material and usually, it’d be in a ready-to-go container (in this case, it was a small suitcase).
thank goodness you’re ok!! and it’s sad that a person died cuz of this…. =( there was a fire at a house down the street from mine a while back, but not a huge fire like this. i just remember seeing a lot of smoke, some firefighters….a lot of people came outside to look cuz it was during the day, on a weekend….
Is there a time stamp on the photos? It’d be interesting to know how much time elapsed between the images.
In a city like Tokyo, where most buildings are put together so closely, fires can be really scary. At least it didn’t get to your building, but it was smart to get outside after a while JUST IN CASE. It’s better to prevent than to be stuck there.
4 years ago I lived in a big apartment building with my mother and our 2 cats, around 4-5 PM we hear the fire alarm go off. We had had a fake one happen before, where kids were playing and pulled it “just for fun” so we weren’t sure if it was real or fake. We had a balcony I never dared to step on because of my fear of heights, but I opened the door wide to see outside and around, we had an appartment on the front corner.
Suddenly I saw THICK BLACK smoke coming from up above and flying into the sky. I freaked and told her it’s real “QUICK pack the cats!!” we only had 1 carrier (cause we would only take 1 cat at a time to the vet) so we pushed BOTH of them in the carrier, they were crushed against each other but we didn’t care. We grabbed our purses and headed out into the stair cases to get out. We lived on the 4th floor so it wasn’t too far down to go. There were others slowly going down the stairs with us too. We crossed the street and waited on the side walk, trying to see what was going on. It seemed the fire was on the top floor or the roof.
The firemen were already there, with 4-5 trucks because the building was pretty big, the street was closed off completely for one block and everyone from the building stood on the curb, waiting and hoping the building wasn’t going to burn down. All I could think of was all my stuff in my room that I would lose if it burned down. All my stuff from Japan that I wouldn’t be able to replace unless I went to Japan again.
Soon we were told by the landlord of the building that the fire was on the roof and it was because of the products being used to repair/re-do the roof. The gooey substance, I think it’s called “tar” ? A fire caught in the tar and it’s an extremely flammable substance so it caught on fire, and spread around the roof very fast. That’s why the smoke was so dark and tick and it stink REALLY bad.
At one point there was a journalist that came by to talk to us, she just had a pen and paper, asked us if we lived in the building and if we minded answering a few of her questions. We didn’t mind, so we talked with her for 15 minutes. She even inquired about our kitties stuck in the little carrier, they were good though, they didn’t complain or anything, they just laid there. Not like they had any other choice. LOL
Eventually there was a bus brought on the street for people to sit in, but it wasn’t too cold out, I think it was spring time so my mother and I just staid outside, sitting on the sidewalk, checking the firemen talk, go in and out.
After probably 3-4 hours we were allowed back in and it’s as if nothing had happened!
It was pretty scary when it happened though :S Not plesant at all! I can only imagine what it feels like to watch your house burn…
Wow, i’m glad that nothing happened to you or your home! Sad about the man
I remember having to practice how to safely leave our bedrooms in case of a fire. I luckily haven’t experienced anything myself but I have lost an aunt and a cousin due to a fire in their apartment building so my parents were a bit anal on the fire safety drill at home.
Oooo a cosmetic convention?!? I’m so jealous (i’m a makeup artist), i love going to makeup events! Did you get anything good?
Oh wow, I’m glad the fire didn’t spread! That’s quite sad to hear about the older gentleman that died, but it’s good that it wasn’t any more than that (especially because of how close everyone is to that building).
And this is mostly unrelated, but what do you use for your allergies? I wanted to try and find something here in Japan so my parents don’t have to keep shipping things from the US. But I can’t read the boxes to figure out what’s for allergies! Nothing looks familiar either.
wow, so scary!! i’m glad you’re ok and that it didn’t touch your apt bldg too! and the eye thing was scary too! your eyes are important! take care! (in fact, i’m a bit suspicious of your never-take’em-out-for-a-month contacts…)
there was an electrical fire in the building where me and my mother lived once, years ago… they got it under control before anything really bad happened, but it was really freaky being awakened in the middle of the night by my mother screaming at me that we needed to get out (and a fireman axing our door….) and it was the middle of winter in Canada. i was like 20 or something. there was a special bus out, for all the people living in our building to wait in, and i waited there with my mom and cat for like 2-3 hours til we were allowed to go back in. we didn’t see any fire and stuff cuz it was all in the walls. but just the experience was kinda scary! also, none of my firemen were hot :p
Gosh O.o; THAT was freakishly close, and it looks like such a tiny backyard! The houses are soooo close together, whoa!
Woah!
Seeing all the photos makes it even scarier!
Like I said on Twitter already, I’m REALLY glad you were safe.
Must have been such a shock in the night/morning
Oh my goodness! That is scary! And so sad about the man who didn’t make it.
I was at my best friend’s house one evening when we were teens, when the house across the street (that she now lives in, ironically) had a fire. We went out to watch, and a bunch of her neighbors were in her lawn/driveway watching as well. Her brother-in-law is part of the county fire team, so he was there and we were watching him work with the other firemen. I don’t remember if anyone had been inside the house at the time, but I don’t recall anyone being injured/dying, at least. It was one of those things where it was so strange/foreign/inconceivable, I didn’t even have an emotional response at first. But I can clearly remember standing on the lawn and watching them try to put the fire out.