Reassessing Life The events of 3/11 happened as I was approaching my 50s. I was in the Akasaka business district of Tokyo and as the quake struck, I was the only person to instinctively hunker under a table at a Doutor coffee shop while the Japanese patrons in the store sat in their chairs looking through the large glass windows as the tall buildings swayed. Then a few days later, as the doom and gloom atmosphere prevailed with the government and TEPCO struggling to contain the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, I visited a hotel in central Tokyo to receive iodine pills for my family from a British Embassy emergency team. Luckily, no radiation cloud came to Tokyo and we all survived.
One thing that stuck in my mind about 3/11 was a TV news report about bedridden patients at an old-age care facility on the Tohoku coast who were swept away with no survivors. Of course, there were many other harrowing experiences of death, suffering and, positively, survival, but to me, the thought of being bed-ridden and unable to escape in an old-age home in Japan lingered with me more than anything else. Statistically, it is a real possibility I might end up in such a situation in my advanced years. That scared me (and still does) and so I decided to keep healthy, fit and mobile for as long as possible—and seriously be able to escape a tsunami!
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