Japanese thriller

The old man couldn’t stand it any more. Too much confusion and unpleasantness surrounded him. The soldiers trying to help people get back to their homes. The police trying to establish some kind of order. How could you establish order in the midst of all this mess? This incredible mess.

All these thoughts in his head made him feel bad. He’d been feeling bad for over a month. He used to be happy, but there was no more happiness here. The happiness had washed out to sea, where it was now lost. Or drowned. So the old man took his sandwich and water and trudged up to the top of his favorite little hill, one that had a splendid view of Sendai Bay and the Fukushima countryside. He knew he would feel better up there.

The walk moved his blood and muscles, which was good. He found his bench, the bench to which he’d come when the word spread that it was time to go higher ground, and fast. He sat down and saw in his mind’s eye once again that surreal sight, the unbelievable tsunami of trash made up of a million sticks and bottles and cars that flowed all over that accursed day and wrecked everything.

He began to eat, and as he chewed and thought his unrelentingly sad thoughts, he noticed something strange out in the bay. There was a patch of water just offshore that was beginning to roil. The late afternoon had been pleasant, the sea flat and untroubled. So this disturbance stood out clearly. The old man watched, and even though he was a ways above the ocean, he could easily see that the surface of the water was bubbling and active. How curious, he thought.

He half-expected some kind of submarine or research vessel to appear. After all, the sea was being invaded by radiation, so scientists would want to get out there and measure things. But no, this wasn’t a submarine. Now he could see it was a … a … head? A big, dark, green head?

Yes. A head. A really big head. With a whole bunch of teeth. Slowly rising out of the water off the Fukushima coast, awakened by the recent bath of cesium 137 particles that had flooded the ocean was the head of a giant reptile. “Oh shit,” thought the old man, for he knew what was goin’ down. “History shows again and again,” he began to sing to himself.

The ghastly head, now fully out of the water, tilted back and unleashed a metallic, horrific, and extremely loud roar of pure malice that seemed to say, “Eat my shorts, humans! I’m here to kill as many of you as I can!” And then, the monster slowly began to rise out of the water, getting larger with each step toward the shore until it finally stood, towering in its hugeness, on land. It turned in the direction of the crippled reactors of the nuclear facility. Godzilla was ready to get this party started.