It’s the start of the third week since the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 hit Northern Japan. Most of the attention, now though, is being diverted to the ongoing nuclear crisis in the Fukushima power plant and the future impact it poses on the environment, agriculture, electricity consumption and power cuts leading into warmer months ahead.

In the capital of Tokyo, some 240km away, the panic created on the day of the quake was experienced by many but largely unreported. The following is a partial excerpt of what Sophie Knight, writer at HESO Magazine, experienced.

“It was going up and down, side to side—like a cruel wind over the Pacific when you’re in a light aircraft and the flight attendants are screaming. The office, however, was oddly quiet. I looked at my two colleagues and they looked back at me, our eyes darting around the circle, trying to intuit what emotion was flashing behind our one another’s eyes. It was as if we were trying to protect each other, by not obviously freaking out, by maintaining some of our famous British veneer. I think I asked a few times, ‘What do we do now? At what point do we get the hell out?”, but the tremors were such that even the thought of traversing the office floor, never mind getting down nine flights of stairs, was too much to contemplate.” Read the full story here.

Doing the Improbable – Hitchhiking to Shinagawa © Alexis Wuillaume