What a bizarre, surreal, nightmarish, comical turn of events yesterday!
Yikes-- There I was, about an hour into the 90-minute Introduction to American Culture and Literature class about fantasy and "The Girl and the Chenoo" (a cool Native American story about a girl who's in the far forest hunting with her stupid and boastful and cowardly older brothers when a giant cannibal monster called a Chenoo shows up at their camp, and she turns it into their grandfather by calling it "Grandfather" and giving it some stew), when suddenly as I was walking round the room reading some fun lines out loud like, "Granddaughter, I am glad you are my relative because I was going to eat you," all 90 or so of the students' smart phone alarms went off at the same time in the same little chime, in unison. I was taken aback, as you might expect. They know not to have their phones on in class, and though sometimes one person's phone might make a sound to make us all laugh, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine hearing ALL the phones make an alarm sound at the same time. Then a weird alarm sounded over the university PA system, and a woman's cold and no-nonsense voice said (in Japanese), "This is a missile attack warning. Move away from windows immediately. Evacuate your buildings and find a safe place to wait outside now. This message will repeat." Etc. What the what? I thought that the class would be over and all the students would stand up and walk out with me, but I saw them strangely calm and even almost laughing, seemingly at me for some reason. I went to the door and peered out and no other classes were evacuating. I looked at the students and they looked at me. My helpful TA Sheryl told me that it was just a drill that had been planned, while a girl in the front row, spunky Runa, asked me, "Didn't you hear about it?" And then it turned out that all the kids KNEW it was going to happen because they all have smart phones (which i don't), and their smart phones had been telling them about it for a while now. They were quite impressed that I didn't know about it. then the whole thing repeated five minutes later. All in all, it probably took about 15 minutes at least out of the class, time I could ill-afford to lose, being, as usual, too behind schedule... in truth, I am rather oblivious too often, and it also turned out (I heard from a colleague during a meeting later that afternoon) that there were posters up all over campus warning about the drill this morning. ANYWAY, apparently the mayor of Fukuoka City decided to run the drill supposedly to get us prepared in case of attack by North Korea. Really I believe it's just way to show off and to make everyone here scared and pliable and willing to support changing the constitution to permit an army and war and so on, and generally to support the current administration's agenda. I think there is little value in simulating a missile attack to get us to recognize the special alarm sound and words for such an event, because if we got nailed by a nuclear missile, say, there'd not be much we could do about it in a few seconds. It was really bizarre, and unpleasant, and disruptive. and that was just in our class! What about the people commuting at 10:00 or trying to work or go somewhere, because I think the trains and so on were stopped then, too... And note that Fukuoka was the only city in Japan to do this. But it is still also strangely funny that all 90 or so of the students KNEW it was going to happen, so I was the ONLY person in the room to be surprised like that and to wonder if possible North Korea had really sent a missile to Fukuoka University (for a few minutes). Maybe I should get a smart phone?
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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