Boring Earthquakes

I slept
through the last two.

Here’s the
“earthquake timeline” since I’ve
arrived:

Sept. 5 – 7:07 pm – richter
6.8 – 381km from Tokyo
Sept. 5 – 11:57 pm –
richter 7.3 – 369km from Tokyo
Sept 7 – 8:29
am – richter 6.4 – 354km from Tokyo
Sept 7 –
8:18 pm – richter 3.8 – 206km from Tokyo
Sept
7 – 9:41 pm – richter 4.3 – 206km from
Tokyo

I’ve been at home for all five of
these, so I’ve yet to experience one while out and about. I’m sure that’ll
happen sooner or later. The first three all gave the apartment building a nice
wobble, but weren’t all that severe. I’m sure if they’d been closer they
would’ve.

The first earthquake I ever
experienced was the one that hit the Pacific Northwest in February of 2001. That
one was a 6.8, and I was about 20km from the epicenter. Lots of noise and
shaking with that one. I expect to have a similar experience here in Tokyo
sooner or later.

I didn’t even know
about the last two quakes until after I got up from a nap this evening. I’ve
subscribed to an email notification service called Nooper that
sends out notices for various news events. (I only get the earthquake ones so
far, but it’s pretty handy.) Every time there’s a quake anywhere in Japan I get
an email with info like I posted above – time, intensity and location. It does
give the actual location of the epicenter, but since that’s in Japanese it
doesn’t help me much.

I knew Japan was
earthquake prone, but having five over the course of three days was pretty
unexpected. Even so, they haven’t been too
alarming.

They’ve almost been
kind of dull.

I’m trying to avoid
feeling that earthquakes are nothing special, as I know how devastating they can
be, but when they’re far away (like these have been) and just give the apartment
a gentle rocking, they’re kind of
neat.

Let’s hope they stay that
way.