I have never seen, before or again, anguish the way I saw it on my Japanese friends' faces when I came in to school on March 11 (US time).
Those friends were exhausted from a night spent half a world away from their loved ones, wondering if each one was alive. They watched endlessly repeating footage of destruction, of explosions at Fukushima Daiichi, of explosions and fires on Tokyo Bay, of salarymen walking home without mass transit - if they were well off enough to live close enough to work to not need mass transit.
The apocalypse happened.
For some of them individually, the worst was yet to come. I don't remember who out of the crowd lost friends, if any. But as these friends largely worked for the Japanese government, it was their responsibility to clean up this mess.
"I can't grab a drink with you on spring break anymore," one told me, deflating my selfish and immature excitement to cheer him up. "I have to rewrite Japan's nuclear energy policy."
He wasn't kidding. He was surrounded with textbooks detailing nuclear reactors as he said it.
Later, another would be habitually sent to the stricken prefectures to promote disaster-stricken regional sake. He was condemned to a life of alcohol and radiation amidst the wreckage - at least for the two year duration of the assignment.
And the one who had to rewrite nuclear policy? He later became the foot soldier of a ministry's mission of apology. He had to go to the same region, and on behalf of the government, apologize for its negligence. And absorb the brunt of the citizenry's anger. Japanese anger does exist - despite the constant refrains that the people are restrained, it's more of a bottling up of emotions. And when they burst, they explode.
Japan is known for its workers' perpetual exhaustion. It's one of the nuances of the word salaryman, which they invented. But salaryman exhaustion is nothing like this. Nobody works like the government workers in the best of times. And to top it all off they had the weight of a country on their shoulders.
All of this happened in a time when the plant's radiation output still wasn't well-understood. The best one could do was carry a smartphone app that sent a notification of a change in measured radiation, and give a jaded laugh at the gallows humor of a populace eating irradiated food.
Just as if the apocalypse had happened.
To see their faces 1, 2, maybe even 3 years after the disaster, the bags under their eyes were ingrained.
But the expressions of sharp disbelief were no longer there.