Last night when I was trying to sleep, the shaking started slowly.
Immediately, the earthquake alarm started ringing from my smartphone, and the shaking became louder and louder.
It was a horizontal tremor, so the epicenter was far away. The tremor was quite large and lasted for a long time (probably more than a minute), so I intuited that it was a big earthquake.
Yahoo is the fastest way to get earthquake information. Unfortunately, the JMA's information is not updated until at least 5 minutes after the quake.
The epicenter of the quake was off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture. The depth of the epicenter was 60 km. The magnitude was 7.3, an aftershock of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
My area has a seismic intensity of 4, which means that people are startled, hanging lights shake, and unstable objects fall. No items on the shelves fell.
My apartment is located near a river, and the ground is weak due to the nearby Ushiku Swamp.
It is 11 stories high and made of steel reinforced concrete. The building is built to earthquake resistance standards, so it doesn't fall down easily, but even a small earthquake shakes it slowly and for a long time, like a ship shaking.
I think it is probably due to the structure.
Japan has frequent earthquakes, so I wasn't too surprised, but I still felt nervous when I felt a big tremor.
I have experienced major earthquakes in the past.
The first time I experienced a major earthquake was at 9:48 a.m. on May 16, 1968, when the Tokachi-oki Earthquake occurred with a magnitude of 7.9.
I was 11 years old at the time, and it was during break time at my elementary school. The intensity of the earthquake in Eniwa City, Hokkaido, where I lived at the time, was 5.
I remember being scared anyway.
I was also impressed by the magnitude 7 earthquake that occurred at 10:53 a.m. on March 20, 2005, off the west coast of Fukuoka Prefecture.
Fukuoka City is known as an area with almost no earthquakes, and no earthquake of this magnitude has ever been recorded.
It was a violent tremor, but at first I didn't think it was an earthquake.
The Nishitetsu Omuta Line runs right next to the apartment building I was living in at the time in Mugino, Hakata Ward, Fukuoka City, so at first I thought it might have been the impact of a train collision.
The Great East Japan Earthquake that started off the coast of Tohoku at 14:46 on March 11, 2011 is still fresh in our memories.
It was the largest earthquake of its kind, with a magnitude of 9, and many people were killed by the tsunami, the images of which went around the world and were widely reported.
At this time, I was working in Kanda, Tokyo, where I work.
The shaking was slow at first, but became louder and louder, and even shook repeatedly for a long time.
I felt fear in my gut that it was a terrible earthquake.
The epicenter of the quake was 500 km north to south, from off the coast of Tohoku to off the coast of northern Kanto. The epicenter of the earthquake was located 500 km north to south from the coast of Tohoku to the coast of Kita-Kanto, and 200 km east to west.
The earthquake last night was an aftershock of this one.
Earthquakes, thunderstorms, fires, and father are the scariest things for Japanese people, in that order, and earthquakes are thousands of times scarier than the new corona.
An earthquake directly under the Tokyo metropolitan area and a huge Nankai Trough earthquake are expected to occur in the not too distant future.
Since these disasters are unavoidable, we must just be prepared.
