December 20, 2006

My first earthquake. I was at the Nova branch in the Higashiura Mall and teaching a Voice class. When I got home David said that they had something on TV about it and some parts of Aichi (including ours) were at a 3 on the Richter Scale. I always thought earthquakes had like, a clearly defined center, but I guess not. The 3's were separated by some distance. Anyway, so I was in Voice with three other people, Minori, a girl who lived in Toronto for a year and desperately wants to go back, a Vice President at a Pfizer reasearch facility, and this woman in her 40's, Youko, who gave me a gift of tea from Kyoto a little while back. So, it wasn't really a big deal, the room shook, I could see the walls moving, and I was rocked back and forth a little bit. At first I thought a really big truck was going by but then I realized we were in a frickin' mall and no truck is that big. They all realized what was happening and looked around for a second or two and then went back to talking like it was nothing. I tried to be funny about it but it was my first earthquake and I was genuinely a little excited:

"Holy Crap! Was that an earthquake?!"
"Yeah. Feels like a 2 or 3."
"Oh. This is my first earthquake. But its just a little one."

It lasted for only a few seconds but the shocks got smaller and smaller until I was trying to convince myself that I could feel something after it stopped. I can check 'survive an earthquake' off my list of things to do. It helps me to visualize how fucking crazy the Kobe earthquake in 1995 must have been. Not the destruction obviously, but it must have been like: 'oh, hey, we should go get some Spaghetti-Os for lunch,' and then the whole city is destroyed in a matter of seconds. Well, it wasn't destroyed in a few seconds, the fires and everything immediately afterwards did a lot, but you know what I mean.