In a country of earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons, preparedness is key. Last year, at the university I was working at, they gave over an entire day to disaster survival including giving students a chance to jump out of a 7th storey window down a tube to the ground. Currently, in my office, there is a rucksack under my desk with supplies in case of an earthquake, and everywhere you go you see evacuation centres and signs telling you what to do in case of emergencies. Preparedness is key. So, it should come as no surprise that my company wants me to be prepared too. As I mentioned in a previous post, I could be asked to go to any university in Tokyo and beyond,to teach at a moment’s notice. So, to make sure I am on my toes, last Friday I got a call at 8.15 asking me to go to a university in Saitama. This was it, this was my first assignment, time to show I could be a supply teacher. Except it wasn’t, it was a drill. There are two types of drill, those which you know are coming and those which you don’t. Those which you know are coming are not really drills, they are more familiarisations, there’s no sense of jeopardy, no panic. And those which you don’t, they send a shiver of fear down your spine. Now on Wednesday, I was warned, there was going to be a drill and when they called me, they said, this is a drill, so my spine was shiverless. Off I trotted to Saitama with the urgency of a sloth, no worries; the biggest sense of jeopardy was if there would be a McDonalds at the end station so I could get a breakfast. It felt quite fun, like a weird kind of scavenger hunt where the prize was a leisurely meander back to the office and of course not having to do the Friday office clean. I am sure the drill was useful, but to be honest, it would have been more real, if they hadn’t prepared me to be prepared.
And in case you are wondering, there was no McDonalds, so I had to go hungry.
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