6:30am Siren

Hello and Good Morning everyone,

I'm back from Kyoto in one piece and it was a wonderful trip, even though I arrived back much later than I expected.  There's just so much to do, so much to see!!!  I'll write about my trip later, but first I was woken up by a strange sound and I thought I'd share it with you...

At 6:30am Sunday morning, which is about an hour ago, the Town Hall siren went off.  Then a man speaking Japanese, and again, the siren.  Since I was up until 2am my time trying to put my pictures on Facebook in order (I must figure out how to do this more efficiently), I grumbled and went back to bed...I mean, futon...well, you know what I mean.

All of a sudden I hear what I thought was many voices and I look outside of the window.  There are a group of people in blue suits and helmets walking the street and it appears they are meeting at the corner down the block.  There are also citizens with them.

I, now fully wide awake and concerned, get changed and look for important items to take with me (passport, dictionary, candy) and I throw on my comfortable shoes in case I have far to walk, and I go outside and walk towards town hall (that's where the group looked like they were going).  All the while wishing I had taken a shower the night before because in Kyoto it was HOT and I was sweating like never before!  (Too much info for a blog, I know!  I apologize!  But fear not, fellow blog readers, I packed deodarent!) 

The strange thing is, no one is around now.  But I figure, Town Hall is just 2 blocks away, I'm bound to see people there.  Nope.  Suddenly a Firetruck goes down the block and I look in the direction it is going in....nothing appears to be down that way, either.  Hmmm, strange.

Finally, I see a lady walking a dog.  I go up to her and ask her the Japanese question, "What is that?" (Kore wa nan desu ka?) and I point to the tower and do my best siren impression.  She smiles politely/uncomfortably (bad siren impression?) and starts speaking Japanese and I smile and nod and have no clue what she is saying.  She waves her hands around and repeats one word the whole time and I must have forgotten about my dictionary because I started to politely/uncomfortably smile.  I thank her and keep walking.  All I got out of that conversation was more confusion, but she did not appear to be concerned.  She was leisurely walking her dog...and she even allowed it to stop and sniff around.  Surely if there was an emergency you would move your puppy along quite swiftly.

So I started back home and I saw a business man on a bike going to work.  He was too far to ask what the heck was going on....not that he'd understand me.  I suddenly remembered the dictionary and I whipped it out and found the word the dog-walker kept repeating.  Meeting.  Hmph.  Do I need to be there?  Is it an emergency meeting?

So I'm walking back home and I see the blue suited group of people walking down the street with the citizens.  I run to catch up to them (they are walking directly away from me),  but not before looking up the word "emergency" in the dictionary.

They stop and I go up to two of the blue suits.  I ask them what the siren was (with hopefully a better siren impression) and shrug.  They smile and laugh and start speaking Japanese.  I start to take out my dictionary and one of them looks like she is trying to find the right English word, so out of respect I pause with my dictionary.  And then, she utters the word she was trying so despretely trying to figure out, the word that might be the answer to all of my questions and could save my life: "Today."

Ok, today.  Today what?  Today I'm going to follow this group.  Today there has been an typhoon.  Today we are all going for ice cream.  What's today?!?!

I pull out my dictionary and show the word "Emergency."  The two blue suits laugh and wave their hands around.  And then they speak more Japanese and make a shaking motion with their hands.  Uh, does that mean earthquake?  I ask "I go?" to them and motion the direction they are going and then I point to where I walked from (home) and made a sleeping motion.  They both laughed and pointed towards home.  I gave them a hesitant Hai (yes) and they just shook their heads and laughed.

So here I am, on 4 1/2 hours sleep on a Sunday morning, wide awake after a trip that involved walking for the two full days.  I was hoping to sleep in today...it IS Sunday.  And because of Hawaii and work and holidays on the weekend in Japan with Erik, I haven't had the opportunity to sleep in in about an entire month or more!  That's what I was planning today (yes, I planned it, ok?  I know that sounds strange, but it's been over a month). 

I'm also still confused...should I  be concerned?  Fear for my life?  But the funny thing is that I'm too tired to be that concerned.  So here I am, writing on this blog.  Perhaps I will share more later today.

But if you don't hear from me in 24 hours, I'd call the authorities!!  Just kidding (I hope:-)