Foreign Trainees Traumatized by Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula Quake

   Suzu, Ishikawa Pref., March 25 (Jiji Press)--Some foreigners on technical intern programs in Japan are planning to return home, being traumatized by the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that jolted the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan, on New Year's Day.
   Dian Andrian, from Indonesia, who works aboard a fishing boat based at the port of Takojima in the Ishikawa city of Suzu, felt horror from the quake, which measured up to 7, the highest level on Japan's seismic intensity scale. "The trauma still lingers," he said in a fluent Japanese.
   The local fishing industry heavily depends on foreign trainees amid a shortage of fishers.
   Andrian, 29, has been working as a fishing boat crew member at the port since April 2022. Andrian was at his apartment where he lives with four other foreign trainees when the temblor struck Jan. 1 this year. He felt a massive jolt that he had never experienced before.
   "I was unable to understand what the Japanese broadcast program was saying because I was panicking," he recalled. Andrian ran out of the apartment barefoot, fled to a nearby mountain with some locals and spent the night around an open fire.

(2024/03/25-16:42)

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