Santa Clarita resident Mas Kosaka was relaxing in his Tokyo hotel room last Friday when suddenly he found himself thrown to the ground – on the 19^th floor.

Kosaka was attending a security conference in Odaiba and left the show early for his room at the Grand Pacific Hotel when, 230 miles to the northeast, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake hit Japan, centered in the town of Sendai.

Buildings “swayed like trees in the breeze” according to news reports.

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“It wasn’t too fun,” he said. “They had had an earthquake prior to me coming to Tokyo that was a 7.5 and everyone shook it off. That was Thursday morning and after we had aftershocks that woke me from my sleep, they were laughing at “you Americans, we have earthquakes here all the time.”

The temblor is the largest in Japan’s history and resulted in thousands of deaths from both the quake and a tsunami wave that wiped entire cities off the map.

“The main thing is that it was pretty horrifying, but what was amazing was how organized the hotel staff was to go through the whole emergency procedure,” Kosaka said.

When the shaking started, he said a message on the hotel intercom asked guests to stay where they were and await further instruction, which soon came. Floors of guests were then told to descend to the hotels three bottom floors.

“We were evacuated floor by floor with the staff walking us down the staircases,” he recalled. “I felt bad, because I understand enough Japanese to know that they were yelling at the workers to get to the side and let the customers by. That’s exactly what they did and all the customers went first. All the workers stood by very quietly, basically apologizing for the inconvenience.”

Hotel staff quickly put barriers around the chandeliers and brought out ballroom chairs for all the guests to have a seat. Once all were seated, they began serving cold drinks, coffee and tea.
”It was like a giant restaurant,” he said. “That night, because all the kitchens were closed and no one could go anywhere, they had made curry rice and spaghetti, which they served to everyone.”

The guests were kept in the lobby for more than eight hours so hotel staff could make sure building was safe before they let them back upstairs. Kosaka was amazed at what he found when he returned to his room.

“The most amazing thing was, when I left my room, everything, broken glasses, TV, lamps, even paintings, was on the ground. But when I got to my room, they had it freshly made, all towels were fresh, they had vacuumed and the TV was in its place.

“It was pretty surreal,” he added. “They had a hot water maker so we could have coffee and tea. You’d have never thought it.”

The next morning, hotel staff prepared breakfast for all the guests, apologizing that they could not extend anyone’s stay, as they were evacuating everyone outside the hotel so they could do a complete inspection of the building.

Kosaka was scheduled to fly out that night and a friend rented a car to take the men to the airport in Norita, normally a 45-minute drive away. The traffic and road conditions turned the short commute into a 100-mile detour that took six hours.

Kosaka’s company manufactures and designs security systems that are sold all over the world, making for a lot of airline miles.

“Because I’m a frequent flier, I got priority, which I was happy for,” he said. “Let’s just say it was a more than interesting visit.”