Earthquake!!

This morning, while watching TV and checking my email, I felt that typical unsteadiness that signaled an earthquake. We have a lot of seismic activity here in Japan and have small earthquakes all the time. Most of the time, WHEN we feel it, it just feels a little bit like we're swaying for a couple of seconds. Sometimes the furniture will shake a little bit and we can see the lamps and curtains moving. But today was definitely the biggest earthquake we've experienced so far.

Its magnitude was 7.2 at the epicenter, which was about 150 miles east of Sendai. What we felt here in Misawa was only about a 4, but it was still really scary. Like I said, I immediately noticed the swaying and kind of stopped what I was doing and tried to gauge if I needed to get up or not. The swaying just kept going, for several seconds, and then the intensity rose and everything started to rattle. The glass in the windows was visibly shaking, the ceiling fan above my head was buzzing really loudly and I could hear the stemware in our bar clinking together. I jumped up and stood in the doorway of our bedroom, which is framed in heavy metal, and wondered if I should try to make a run for the front door as the house continued to rumble. Thankfully it didn't get any worse than that and nothing appears to have been damaged. However, I was very motion sick for several minutes afterward because our housing here on base is built on rollers and so our building literally swayed back and forth for a couple of minutes. I felt like I was on a boat in my own living room!

Since then we've felt a couple of small aftershocks. It was interesting seeing everyone's posts pop up on facebook right afterward. I am very thankful that we live in a town home rather than one of the towers. They are also built on rollers so the towers are still a relatively safe place to live. But the motion is so much more exaggerated on the upper floors, so some of my friends had dishes, picture frames, and other fragile things that were damaged.

If what we felt today was only a 3-4 magnitude earthquake, I cannot IMAGINE being near the epicenter of one of these major quakes that have hit around the world in the last couple of years. My heart continues to go out to the people in Christchurch, NZ who are not only putting up with the devastation of the recent quake, but are constantly stressed because of the continuous aftershocks.

Such is the adventure of living in a place right on a fault line! So - who wants to come visit?? ;^)