Today in 1995, a big earthquake suddenly hit Kobe and the Hanshin-Awaji area, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying millions of households and buildings in that area. At that time, I lived in my parents’ house in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, a city in the eastern vicinity of Kobe. This entry is the record of what I experienced there when that disaster happened twenty years ago.
(more…)Tag: Hyogo
-
A Party with High School Classmates
One day, a postcard arrived at my flat inviting me to a party hosted by an old boys’ and girls’ association of the high school, to be held on 27 April this year in Takarazuka. I had never seen such a party with my high school classmates before, since the commencement ceremony 21 years before. I wanted to see how the people had changed their faces and figures from what they had been in high school, so I replied to the sender that I was going to attend and booked airline tickets.
As the plane from Narita Airport to Osaka was scheduled to depart at 6.25 in the morning, and there were no trains to Narita from where I live that would have let me catch the plane, I drove to the airport at midnight. I parked it in the car park to sleep until the terminal building opened.
(more…)