Student Back From Japan
21 March 2011, 05:00
A student who was on a University year abroad in Tokyo has been telling Heart about her experiences after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami there ten days ago.
23-year-old Emma Self from Norwich has been speaking to Heart after being flown home from Tokyo - six months into her University year abroad.
Whilst she wasn't in the city when the earthquake hit, she did need to get back there to get her belongings before coming back home.
Her University in Central Lancashire decided to fly the students studying there home, following the disaster and after reports of radiation leaks from a damaged nuclear power plant. This week the government has also been putting on special flights for British people stuck out in Japan.
Emma told Heart, she went back to get her things quickly from Tokyo before her flight, but says despite her worries about radiation levels, the atmosphere in the city seemed calm: "From living there for six months, I noticed things like shops were closed and there were longer lines for the bus, but apart from noticing those kind of things and there being less people, the Japanese people handled it so well, you wouldn't have known anything was going on. The only thing I was worried about was the nuclear power plant."
She also told us, even though she was very sad to leave - after hearing reports from home about the nuclear situation, she knew she wanted to come home: "I was really relieved just to be outside of Japan because even though I felt safe where I was, I couldn't eat properly, I couldn't sleep properly, I was very stressed, so I was just happy to be going home."