May 8, 2008...9:52 am
Shaken, not stirred.
The first tremors began to hit around 12:30 am, just as I was about to go to sleep last night. The clinking sound of wine glasses was the first sign, then the rolling sensation. The first round lasted about 20 seconds.
Five minutes later came some more shaking. Not as big as the first time around, I considered them aftershocks. But they didn’t stop. For about an hour straight, every 5 or 6 minutes, the wine glasses would start up their song again. I turned on the TV to see what was going on.
Each tremor was given a message on TV at the top of the screen mere seconds after the quakes stopped. I was watching a local broadcast channel (the station is literally down the street from our apartment) and the messages always read the same.
Earthquake Information:
Level 2 magnitude: Fukushima, Koriyama, Iwaki, etc. etc…(about 15 places given)
Level 1 magnitude: Aizu, Minami-Aizu, etc. etc. (about 10 places given)
(Note: Magnitudes are given on a Japanese scale, the strongest being level 7))
Like I said, this was being posted every 5, 6 minutes as the tremors kept rolling through.
Then at around 1:45 as I was still lying in bed awake with the TV on in the background, the wine glasses started violently dancing, and I jumped up to make sure nothing was close enough to squish us. I looked at the TV banging against the wall, and as the quake was still going on this very straightforward message appeared at the top of the screen:
Earthquake Information:
DANGER! Fukushima, Koriyama, Iwaki
It was a pretty large quake, but nothing bad enough to warrant grief, so cheers to that. Still, I wish I had a better night’s sleep, as I’m about to start off my day zooming around town with appointments to be kept and lessons to be instructed.
(For those of you interested, here’s a little bit more on the quake)
6 Comments
May 8, 2008 at 10:38 am
Glad you and your family weren’t hurt in the quake. Sorry about the loss of sleep. But what I’m REALLY relieved about is that your family was also not hurt during the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. And I also continue to be thankful that you weren’t aboard the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk when it sank in 2000.
May 8, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Deas, have I ever expressed my relief about you never having been injured by an exploding cell phone before? And need I even mention Chernobyl?
May 8, 2008 at 4:34 pm
But wait, he was in that sub. The time machine, don’t forget it! Alex has injected himself half-hazardly into random points in the timeline to further his evil victory plan.
昨日の晩から今朝に渡っていくつか弱い地震が起こった。 Yay! I finally got an excuse to use that grammar point!
May 9, 2008 at 2:49 am
I’m so glad you’re all ok! Sounds like a day in California.
PS Our server blew moments after I sent my previous and unfinished e-mail to you and has been down ever since - no access to e-mail or calendar since Tuesday morning! It may be up today…
May 9, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Claytonian: Congratulations! No…wait, it’s May 2008 now? No, that won’t happen for another 2 years and 3 months from now. But, pre-emptive, time-machine-induced congratulations!
Mom: We (and the wine glasses) are all fine. Whenever the server comes back up, send me something for kicks.
June 12, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] It was apparently a fairly big earthquake - showing up on the the local blogs. [...]
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