This morning I attended an emergency drill held at Komazawa Park. The registration was at 9. Even though the nearest gate of Komazawa Park is only a 10-minute walk from my house, the gymnasium where the drill took place is 25 minutes away.
My weekdays mornings are always busy because I have to prepare breakfast, bento lunch for the kids and then walk with Mel to school. It’s always a race against time. Mel must be at school by 8:37, and we usually have to partly run there, especially on the downhill road.
For this morning, I woke up at 6, planned to leave for Mel’s school by 8 and then maybe took a taxi to Komazawa Gymnasium. I might take a bus if the timing was right.
After dropping Mel, I saw the No. 1 bus as suggested by google map, but I was confused on whether it was going in the right direction. I crossed the road but couldn’t find one that was going the other way.
In the end, I decided to just walk along Jiyu Dori and try to catch a taxi if I saw one. However, all the taxis were going towards Jiyugaoka instead of Komazawa Daigaku. So, despite it being a freezing morning with a forecast of snow, I had to walk all the way for about half an hour.
I had to stop once to ask for direction and managed to arrive just a minute before 9. The email had stated that we should be there by 9 and any latecomers wouldn’t be allowed in, that’s why I was so anxious, but it turned out, the registration was from 9 to 9:30.
I was assigned to Group C. There were already a group of Americans who seemed to know each other and also a group of Chinese. I was alone, but just before the briefing started, I saw two familiar faces. They were from my Japanese class at Unesco.
The drill was really beneficial. We were shown model of rescue centre and basic facilities, then underwent an earthquake simulation as well as learned how to remove a person (mannequin) who was trapped under a collapse building and give a first aid.
We were given a list of things that we should have in our emergency kit bag and also taught to write down our rescue plan for such emergency.
The programme ended around 1:30 p.m. After having pepperonchino and pizza lunch with my Indonesian friend at Saizeriya, I did some shopping before walking back home. I reached home around 4 and then at 4:45 went out again to go pick Mel up.
After all the walking that I did, my app showed showed that I had walked a mere 8.4 km. Not much, right?
Fragrance in My Garden 
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