Biking and the Beach

Last Friday Jonathan and I too a bike ride in the late afternoon/evening. Before setting out I bought some snacks at a konbini. I got peach mango gummies, tea, and Cheeza crackers (So good! Better than Cheez-its!) The tea came with a Rilakkuma bottle cover! :)

We took a bridge from Hamamatsu to Iwata that we had never taken before. It was shaky! It had a pretty view of the wind turbines in the distance. I really like them for some reason.

The wind turbines are kind of creepy up close. Actually the whole area had a kind of creepy feel in a good way.

The bike path went along the ocean for a while and then went through the woods. Eventually we made it to the beach and ate our snacks.

Jonathan was not thrilled with my cute snacks. Luckily he had his own, but I made him take this picture, haha. Though he did eat some of my gummies and really liked them.

We didn't stay at the beach too long because it was getting dark and I didn't want to bike through the woods at night. On our way back we saw a tanuki on the path! I didn't get a picture, but I found this one somewhere online.

 

There's a sad, creepy, little lighthouse. It didn't look so bad from really really far away.

The next morning we had a minor earthquake. My apartment swayed and creaked and there was a bigger jolt at one point, but nothing huge. It lasted maybe about 20 seconds. In a few minutes I looked up the map online and saw that the epicenter was not far from here and that it had been a 5.1.  It was a 3 out of 7 on the JMA scale here (which is based on actual shaking and how it feels) and a 4 where Jonathan lives. He was at my apartment when it happened. On the way back to his apartment later that day he was saying maybe his picture frames or something had fallen over. I said I really doubted anything had fallen.

 When I went in his apartment I saw all his pictures still standing. Then I turned and saw the destruction. Captain Picard had fallen down! Hahaha.

Later we went back to the beach, but this time we drove. 

We made like a sand fort thingy, haha. We were both making our own at first and competing, but mine kept getting washed away by the waves so eventually I just helped him with his.

Yesterday I was on Skype with Jonathan and I heard the earthquake alarm on his phone going off and then my phone alarm started going off. I looked at it and saw that it said some other prefecture but I couldn't read which one. It didn't start shaking though and I figured that if it didn't start shaking soon it wasn't much. But then when that alarm went off the town's alarms started going off.

I looked at what people were saying on facebook and the phone message had said something about a magnitude 7 earthquake in Nara. It seemed weird though because even though Nara is kind of far away I think we would have felt at least something here. I kept checking the earthquake map online and eventually the information updated. It had been a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. So it turns out it was a false alarm. It was kind of weird.