Last night
Had a hard time sleeping last night as a swarm of earthquakes kept rocking me out of my slumber over about an hour.
When I was first shaken awake by a strong jolt, I turned on the light and noted the time was 1:10 a.m. After settling back in and drifting off a bit, the house started shaking hard enough to wake me up again. This cycle off getting back to sleep and being shaken awake must have occurred about five or six times during the night, with a couple of really hard jolts thrown in for good measure. Also, there was one instance after a strong temblor when I could feel the bed continue to sway back and forth for what seemed to be quite a long time and build back up into another episode of violent shaking.
We had not had a strong earthquake for quite some time and it is easy to forget about them, but old Mother Nature has her ways of keeping you on your toes.
I felt one of the big ones down in Yokohama. According to the USGS (United States Geological Society) there were quite a few… They are all described as “NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN” The times are UTC (Japan time is UTC +9)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php
Magnitude Date Time Latitude Longitude Depth
May 8th, 2008 at 11:59 am4.7 2008/05/07 19:20:23 36.169 141.503 35.0
5.0 2008/05/07 18:20:00 36.117 141.473 35.0
4.6 2008/05/07 17:40:56 36.252 141.877 35.0
5.2 2008/05/07 17:31:19 36.219 141.590 35.0
4.6 2008/05/07 17:28:56 36.140 141.879 35.0
6.8 2008/05/07 16:45:20 36.137 141.446 35.0
5.0 2008/05/07 16:24:11 36.086 141.835 37.3
5.9 2008/05/07 16:16:39 36.261 141.700 35.0
5.4 2008/05/07 16:12:28 36.335 141.737 35.0
6.2 2008/05/07 16:02:06 36.216 141.449 35.0
4.7 2008/05/07 15:25:15 36.087 141.876 35.0
4.6 2008/05/07 11:09:05 36.191 141.732 35.0
4.5 2008/05/07 10:50:01 36.764 141.705 35.0
4.8 2008/05/07 09:59:04 36.132 141.712 35.0
Yes, and I think I felt most of those.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pmonce, when I was dutifully trailing behind Arden & Crew in a basement supermarket in Tatty-B..
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Tatebayashi_ekimae.JPG
..late on a Saturday Evening, and a tremblor decided to throw me to the floor and dump a couple of cans of corn on my noggin…
(as my bro-in-law (Ayumu-W) once commented..”yokoso remora-chan - rellcome to japan!”).
what crossed my mind first was “I wonder how the lads over at the Fujitsu System Center are getting on?”
http://fenics.fujitsu.com/idc/tatebayashi.html
*you see?, I care about my family and partners in crime.*
rem.
((+_+))…
May 8th, 2008 at 1:21 pmNo matter how long I live in Japan, and I hope there are still many years to come, I will never get use to earthquakes. After a strong shake I always feel like throwing up. I can cope with typhoons and other forces of nature, but quakes I just cannot handle.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pmI remember when I was sitting on a high mountain in the Japan Alps when I was making a painting, lost in my own little world. I was bought back to reality with a strong quake, suddenly the rock solid mountain which had been keeping me safe all day turned into what felt like liquid. Large parts of it starts falling away changing my whole mindset then I realized what seemed like forever was only a few seconds. Gave up on the painting and headed back to my studio.
one of the first nites i spent in japan (at my wife’s compound)..I was soaking in the ofuru, after a long days skiing..(Kusatsu)
and I started to notice these curious ripples on the bathwater..
when it started to subside..Arden frantically threw back the shoji and yelled “Is the bath o.k.?”
well I knew after that - I am just about secondary to a jishin..a bath..and just about everything elves.
remora
May 8th, 2008 at 5:15 pmReminds me of my first “jishin” experience in Kinugawa resort in 89′. It was one vertical jolt, but enough to knock me on my behind. My fellow employees looked at me as though “what are you doing on the ground”. I think my legs must have just given out in fright. Also, my mother in law could always hear them coming before we felt them. She lived on a small mountain overlooking a valley in Batoh.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:20 amCould this be the big one coming?
Have you seen the heavily CG laden TV shows demonstrating what is going to happen to Tokyo any day now? They’ve been shown periodically for years. It freaks my wife out! They say that big quakes hit Tokyo every 70 something years and the last one was in 1923.
They say dams will break, flooding all those B5 subways, etc.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:49 amwhile watching news reports on the Big One that’s just hit China, I remembered that ghoti mentioned once that he was up that way somewhere..
If you are up there pal, call in and let us know you are in one piece.
remora
May 15th, 2008 at 6:06 ammaybe your sixth sense kicked in when you wrote this Edward, but it seems uncanny that the China Earthquake followed not more than a week later.
Maybe this is a chance for Japan to take one small step towards mending long standing grievances with the people of China.
Probably not, but still when it comes to jishin’s Japan and China are in the same fragile little boat..
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/13/business/AS-FIN-ECO-Japan-China-Quake-Companies.php
rem.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:20 pmyes, it is remarkably uncanny that you anticipated it Edward - I can’t quite grasp it..
One might say it is a clear case of J-isshin Denshin !!
*one long overdue cyber-cigar and a celery stick for me waiter..er? no i’ll pass on the kerosene thanks*
remora
May 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm