Last night I was working on packing up some stuff to send to America. I was taping up a box when my apartment started shaking like crazy. I noticed it from the window first because I was kneeling right next to it. I jumped up really quickly and ran away from the window. I stood in between the two bedrooms for a little bit looking around and saw my Christmas tree (Yeah... Christmas tree. I finally took it down today, lol.) wobbling back and forth. All the windows and doors were rattling like crazy and the lights were swinging. The then apartment made a horrible crazy kinda screeching noise. I kinda ran back and forth between the two rooms a bit trying to figure out where the safest place was, but then it stopped. In total it only lasted about 10 seconds. Everything was still for a few seconds and then the apartment shuddered again and things rattled for about a second. This happened every once in a while for a couple minutes. I felt a couple small aftershocks within minutes of the earthquake.
I kept checking the Japan Meteorological Agency website until they finally put up the earthquake map a couple minutes later. I was really hoping that there was not going to be a tsunami! Luckily, when the information was up, they said there would not be a tsunami... whew!
As you can see, the epicenter was fairly close! At that time they said it was a 6.0 quake, though later I heard reports of 6.2 and 6.4. Whatever it was, my town was shaken at intensity 4 (on a scale of 1-7) and the area at the epicenter was shaken at intensity 6! It was pretty rough compared to how I felt the earthquake on Friday. Here the big earthquake felt so gentle. There was quite a bit of motion, but it was a gentle sliding back and forth and a very regular motion. The earthquake last night was like back and forth and up and down and some jolts were stronger than others.
It was pretty scary and I never want to feel an earthquake like that again. Actually, I never want to feel any sort of earthquake again! All this stuff going on actually makes me anxious to leave Japan. Last week at this time there were many things that I was looking forward to in America, but I was also pretty sad to leave Japan. But now, I'm ready to go. With all this stuff going on, it makes me fear the Tokai Earthquake even more.
Right now I'm still planning on going to Tokyo on Saturday after moving out of my apartment, but I'll keep an eye on the nuclear situation. Higher than normal levels of radiation have been detected in Tokyo, but they're still not high enough to be harmful. Hopefully things don't get worse and I can still spend a little time in Tokyo, though I know it wont be like before.
On a happy note, my packing is going well and I got all my packages sent today. I even mailed my Fuji walking stick with no problem! Now I just have to cram the rest of my stuff into my suit cases... :P
And now here's a news video about last night's earthquake:
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