Earthquakes ...

This week I was fortunate enough to experience my first earthquake in Japan!

Quite honestly, it was a rather non-event here ... but for me, I was quite taken aback by it.

It was a very weak earthquake ... it only registered 2.5 or something on the Richter scale, which means that in geological terms, it was basically a non-event. Actually, to my neighbors and co-workers, it was basically a non-event ... earthquakes of this magnitude are fairly common here, even slightly more powerful ones, so in general people don't seem to get too bothered about it. People like to joke about when they have experienced earthquakes with foreigners, because usually the Japanese are very calm, but the same cannot be said about their company ...

However, being on the 12th floor of my 13 story apartment building, I think the effects were amplified in my apartment slightly ... it was enough to shake my table and chair, rattle some things in the cabinets, and dislodge some items which had been poorly positioned. Overall, there was no damage, except to my life expectancy which is now several years shorter due to my inability to explain why the floor was vibrating, and my soccer ball was rolling around the floor at 6:30 AM. All joking aside, it could have been much worse, and I am well aware of that.

One thing that this does, is it gives you a pretty good perspective on just how hard and how fast mother nature could wipe you out, seemingly any time she wants too ... As you may know, Japan is positioned on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" which is why it is littered with all manner of volcanoes and such. It is one of the busiest areas in the world in terms of seismological activities, so being here, you really do get the sense that you have very little control over what will happen in the future.

In my area, there is a kind of prediction about a very large earthquake which will strike this general area at some point in the near future. The most common date, they have predicted is sometime in April ... and furthermore, they have some very specific ideas about where the epicenter will be ...

Let's just say I hope they are wrong ...