At approximately 8:44 on the evening of 16 November, a magnitude-4 earthquake shook the Kanto area of Japan. Although some barely noticed the tremor, the quake dealt a sizeable blow to the Village Vanguard store in Sangenjaya, Tokyo.

Village Vanguard is a chain of book stores in Japan, but also the place to go for those looking for a Jamaican flag Zippo lighter, bag of freeze-dried astronaut food, DVD of Golden Eggs, and/or bag with a Dr. Pepper logo on it in a country that by and large neither knows of nor likes the drink.

Following the damage caused by the quake, an outpouring of support has been seen from netizens in Japan.

Around 45 minutes before the quake hit, Village Vanguard posted a tweet promoting their new line of masks resembling television personality Tatsuo “Brother Tats” Umemiya. The enthusiasm with which they promoted the potential gag gift only serves as a chilling portent for what was about to come.

“Personally authorized!! Brother Tats mask now in stock!! 840 yen. Let’s flash-mob Shibuya with them!!”

A few minutes after the quake hit Kanto, several nappers who were gently awoken by the shaking checked their Twitter accounts only to find this scene of devastation.

“Jeez, come on….! (>_<)”

“Jeez, come on” indeed. Dozens of carefully stacked books had been thrust from their shelves and lay covering the floor in a colorful pile of chaos. Net users could only watch in horror as the unfortunate staff of the Village Vanguard, only hours before closing time, was looking at a right royal mess to clean up.

Netizens lent the bummed out workers their support with comments such as:

■ “That’s just… It looks like a big job. Good luck.”
■ “I’m in Sangenjaya. It’s sad to see such a thing to happen to Village Vanguard who helped me so much.”
■ “Wha? The shaking was that bad?”
■ “That’s awful! I’m a former bookseller so this is chilling to me. Keep up the hard work!”
■ “Godspeed!”
■ “I can’t do anything from here. But you have the support and compassion of someone from the same book store.”
■ “There was an earthquake?”

Experts in seismology and book-stacking held an emergency conference to find how best to avoid such spillages in the future. Some claimed that the Village Vanguard were lucky not to have employed the massive towers of stacked books used by other stores in Japan. Others argued that a spiral tower may have been better as all the copies would at least have been the same title.

The tight quarters of the Village Vanguard’s book section allowed the scattered books to get what experts refer to as “all jumbled up” and significantly irritated the staff beyond standard WHO levels of annoyance for book store employees.

Source: Twitter – Village Vanguard via Byokan Sunday (Japanese)