Wit & Wisdom
Roger Jenkins
storyteller
storyteller
© Roger Jenkins 2011 Made With Serif WebPlus.
© Roger Jenkins 2011 Made With Serif WebPlus.
Yuuki (the word means brave in Japanese) lived with his family in a village by the sea beside a small mountain. One day, Yuuki was playing on the hillside, watching the villagers prepare for a festival that night to celebrate a wonderful rice harvest.
Suddenly Yuuki felt an earthquake. It was not strong enough to frighten him but Yuuki, who had felt dozens of shocks, thought it was odd - a long, slow, spongy motion. Soon after, Yuuki saw something even stranger. The sea darkened and began running away from the shore very fast, leaving behind wide stretches of beach Yuuki had never been seen before.
He remembered his grandfather’s warning. His grandfather had told the boy how his own father's father had told him: just before a terrible tidal wave, the sea suddenly and quickly rolls backward.
Yuuki ran down the mountainside to warn the people. Many had gone to the beach to explore the new stretch of sand.
"Get back, get back!" shouted the boy. "There is terrible danger!"
"What are you talking about, Yuuki?" laughed his neighbour. "Look at all the beautiful shells on the beach!"
"No, no! You don't understand!" cried Yuuki. "Run away! Up to the mountain! Everybody! Now!" But no one listened. Desperate, Yuuki could think of only one thing to do. He lit a torch
and hurried with it to the fields. Hundreds of rice-stacks stood golden and dried in the sun. He used the torch to set them all on fire. Terrified, he began screaming: "Fire! Fire!"
The people hurried from the beach, horrified by the burning rice and the destruction of their livelihood. "It’s Yuuki’s fault!" cried a boy. "He set fire to the rice!”
"Yuuki, is this true?" said Yuuki's mother. Yuuki hung his head.
Just then, someone cried, "Look!" On the horizon was a long line, like the shadow of a coast where no coast had even been - a line that grew thicker as they looked. That long thin line of darkness was the returning sea, tall as a cliff, racing towards them.
The enormous wave struck the shore violently. Then nothing could be seen but a storm of spray. When they looked again, they saw the sea roaring over their homes. It drew back, tearing out the land as it went. Twice, three times, the sea hammered the land. Finally, the sea returned to its normal place and stayed there.
On the mountain no word was spoken. All stared at the destruction below, at the ruins of their village. "I'm sorry I burned the fields," said Yuuki, his voice trembling.
"Yuuki," said his father. "You saved us all."
The villagers raised Yuuki high in the air. "We were going to celebrate our rice harvest tonight, but now we'll celebrate that we're all still alive!"
YUUKI & THE TIDAL WAVE
A 10 yr old English girl saved a 100 other tourists from the 2005 tsunami because of a geography lesson about the giant waves. Tilly Smith urged her family to get off Maikhao beach in Thailand after seeing the tide rush out and boats on the horizon begin to bob violently. She remembered a school project on earthquakes. She told her mother, ‘We must get off the beach now. I think there is going to be a tsunami.” Her parents warned the other families and they got off the beach just in time. It was one of the few beaches where no one was reported killed or seriously injured. Having knowledge is one thing – but sometimes it takes great courage too. This a true story from Japan.