When I got home from work last night I was puzzled by a rythmic clacking sound coming from my bedroom. The culprit turned out to be the jewelry rack hanging on the bedroom door; the necklaces were gently swaying, and the sound was the noise they made as they hit the door. Clack, clack, clack.
I'm used to these tiny earthquakes by now -- another time, I noticed one only because I saw the reflection in my bedroom mirror rippling. But I noticed this one lasted longer than usual. Aftershocks, I thought, and then I felt an odd buzzing in my right ear -- kind of like a mosquito, but (for once) there were no bugs around. (I have a slight mosquito problem in my apartment.)
Something was definitely afoot with the earth's crust.
I sat down on my brand-new, super-comfy sofa to flip through a magazine while I waited for sleep to come -- and about half an hour later, the shaking started in earnest. (That turned out to be the 6.2 quake that hit at 1:43.)
Living atop four constantly clashing tectonic plates doesn't bother me: most of the resulting earthquakes are too small to feel. Even the bigger ones, I only really notice if I'm in bed, and they just feel like someone grabbed the bed frame and rolled it back and forth. (True story: my first quake happened when I was living at Hardy Barracks, and my first thought was that the people in the room next to me were slamming their headboard against the wall.) Obviously
I'm hoping the fates and the plates will postpone the Kobe-level, city-leveling quake that Tokyo is overdue for, until I'm done living here. But I don't waste time worrying about the possibility. If it happens it happens, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it.
Last night's quake was the worst one I've experienced. The shaking seemed to go on and on -- I estimated it at 3 or 4 minutes, but co-workers said it probably was more like 1. At one point I wondered if I should be in a doorway (the safest place to be, so you're not struck by falling debris), but it ended just after I had that thought. I think. The ear-buzz returned during the second quake -- I think the shaking played havoc with my inner-ear balance -- so I had a hard time gauging whether I was actually moving or just felt like I was. (Kind of like getting off the Spider at an amusement park, and you stagger drunkenly for a few seconds because you feel like you're still spinning.)
Nothing fell, though, and I dozed off and slept through the other quakes. (Reuters says there were five.) So I'm looking on the whole thing as establishing my expat cred -- now I have a "big quake" under my belt.
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4 comments:
As a general rule, if it's strong enough that you have to stand in a doorway, you won't be able to stand -- it will knock you off your feet. So there's no sense worrying about it! Unless you happen to be standing (or sleeping) near any tall, heavy furniture, that is, in which case crawl the hell out of the way as soon as possible.
Sharen (ah, memories) once counseled me that the proper thing to do in an earthquake is to throw yourself spread-eagle, face down, onto a bed. Ummm, yeah.
I never got the ear-buzzing, but I always felt mildly queasy after earthquakes -- up to a half hour after big ones. Guess it really does throw off your balance, seeing as how your body's one frame of reference, i.e., the ground, isn't so much solid anymore. Wheeeee!
I'm glad you're so calm about earthquakes. The thought of them freaks me out. I'll take a good blizzard over an earthquake any day.
As for the mosquitoes...I've read that a sqirt bottle of lysterine kills them fast.
The big one that hit in California in the early 90's I experienced... in Vegas. It is odd and discombobulating and I felt off balance for much of the day.
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