I'm sure you've all heard about the earthquake that hit Japan on Friday afternoon. When the news broke, we happened to be watching CNN - one of those hysterical American political "debates" between a gun-toting soccer mom, a political blogger who appeared to have no knowledge whatsoever of foreign policy, and an actual reasonable expert who looked increasingly embarrassed to be part of the who circus. But I digress.
I have friends in Tokyo, and so I sat there, glued to the screen for hours, watching buildings crumble, roads break into chunks like so much peanut brittle, and people - afraid, hurt, worried for loved ones, or just wondering how they were going to get home now that the bullet trains had ground to a halt.
With no public transport available and the roads in chaos, most of Tokyo's workers, students and tourists resigned themselves to the long trek home, or at least towards some kind of transport in the suburbs. I wondered about my friends, J, R, and P, who I know work at one end of the city and live at the other, a pain of a commute even when everything is running smoothly.
For this story to make sense, you need to know a little about out heroes. They met at MIT as undergraduates ten years ago, where they all did some incredibly complicated degree involving computers. J, a Japanese-American, is an amazing artist. R, originally from India, is, so they tell me, an outstanding computer programmer, and with his business nous, Irishman P could very well be the next Donald Trump, only nicer and better looking. Together, the intrepid three have been in Tokyo for the last year, working the computed game design market and aiming to set up their own company.
Anyway, on Friday afternoon, J, R and P set out on the long walk home. They had been going for five hours when they got fed up and decided it was too cold and too dark to proceed. They looked around for somewhere to spend the night, and realised they had stopped on the threshold of a karaoke bar. Well, when the universe extends you an invitation like that, how can you say no? And so it was that a Japanese-American, and Indian and an Irishman walked into a karaoke bar in Tokyo...
The bar was already full of salarymen who'd had the same idea hours ago, if the number of empty beer bottles lying around was any indication. The arrival of fresh entertainment was greeted with gleeful shouts of "boyband des-ne!", giggles and guffaws. Before they knew what was happening, the mic was wrenched from the slightly desperate grasp of a middle-aged middle manager who had been subjecting the bar to a very morose rendition of My Way, J, R and P were (gently) pushed up onto the stage, beers appearing miraculously in one hand and mics in the other, and the boys found themselves performing The Osmonds' Crazy Horses, quite a bit of the Backstreet Boys early material, a Motown medley, and finally, a life-affirming I Will Survive to which the entire bar sang along.
The next morning, the erstwhile bar flies did what they could to help one another on their way. The next few weeks, or months, are going to be anything but fun and games for the people affected by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. But I give thanks for the resilience of the human spirit, and for the fact that these people were able to snatch some joy from a situation that was anything but. As long as I know how to love I know I'll stay alive.
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