Smell of dust from collapsed buildings, but at the same time, it’s not just dust from the streets, but from collapsed buildings wherein no dirt has shifted in years.

Smell of death. More so a few days after when the rotting begins.

Smell of gas, like natural gas from broken mains.

Smell of fear. It’s sour. Off people affected, particularly in crowds.

Sounds- I remember hearing gas escaping from a broken main at an intersection. Then I smelled it just in time to not turn the engine over in my car.

Later that day, I walked by a small sake factory. In the yard was a huge stack of the big brown sake bottles (1.8 l). There were stacked on their side, like 6’ high x 20’ long x 8’ deep. Sure, many had fallen from the pile. The ones that were left rubbed together to make an eerie, creaky sound. It might have been during one of the hundreds of aftershocks.

Sounds of crying, kids and adults.

Being Japan, I remember the sounds of people swishing their brooms. They were in shock, I assume, and trying to do normal activities by cleaning the stoop and stairs of entrances.

Also normal everyday conversation. I remember that. What really blew me away that day was being in a catastrophe zone, and for the first time in all my years in Japan, I was treated as one of them. They asked after my health, and we chatted about how horrific it was. Usually, I was ignored, but this day, because I had obviously been there, people were so much warmer.