Rude Awakening

I was already awake when the shaking started, around 4:20am. I think a small part of my brain thought ‘large truck’ but then a different, more primal part of my brain said ‘Earthquake’ and then I was fully awake.

The shaking from a quake always feels strong if you are lying horizontally. So I sat up. it's a strange thing, especially if you live in places which don’t usually have them. The entire building - walls, floor, ceiling, furniture everything rocks from side to side. Not hard. But not gentle either. And the speed changes - soft, strong, soft, very strong - Like turbulence on a plane. Imagine trying to walk along the aisle of a speeding train, with a cup of tea in your hands.

For a few seconds I didn’t move… but then as it got stronger I headed to the door. Something in my head told me that I’m supposed to stand in a door frame. My hand was on the door handle… and it stopped. A strange quiet filled only with the mild groaning of wood and metal coming to rest, the distant sound of alarms and a barking dog. I think the whole thing lasted for about 10 or 15 seconds, Nothing broke, nothing fell off the wall. No one was hurt. The rest of the house was quiet - I thought everyone else had slept through it but in the morning I found out that actually they had all done the exact same thing as me and were just about to start heading for the front door. 

Turns out this was 5.5 magnitude, at a 64 km depth, about 60 km away from where I am. Here in Sendai, there’s still a very strong memory of the ‘Great Tohuku Earthquake’ and Tsunami of 2011. if you don’t know about it, then here’s a link. 

Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011

 It was one of the biggest ever recorded earthquakes on the planet - 8.9 - which, due to the epicentre being just off the coast, caused a Tsunami that did most of the destruction, rather than the quake itself. The official death toll is close to 20,000. So nobody takes even the smallest quake lightly. Because they all start out little.

I had left Japan the year before the big quake and, I’m not gonna lie, one of my motivators for leaving was the fear. People here knew it was coming. everyone did. Historically there's been a big quake here every 25-40 years and it was overdue. I say overdue but smaller quakes, like the one last night are a monthly, even weekly occurrence here. We had Earthquake drills and earthquake simulations at my place of work to ready us for the event when it came.

As a boy who grew up in central London,where large scale environmental events like earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornados and such things are pretty much unheard of, the very real fear of it was a large contributing factor to not staying here in the long term. I mean, why would you?