Earthquake in Tokyo!

I was peacefully sleeping and suddenly I was woken up by my bed rocking from side to side. When it stopped, I said to my roommate Sunghee, "Was that an earthquake?" "Uh-huh," she answered. "OK," I said.

Then it started back up again. "It's lasting a long time," Sunghee said. "Well, they do build their buildings to sway here," I replied.

When it was over, I got up, grabbed my phone & tweeted "earthquake in Tokyo!" which generated an entire thread of Facebook comments, including a link to the USGS page earthquake we felt. It was a 5.3!

What's funny is that there was apparently there was a 4.9 last night at about 11:45pm, but none of us felt it.

This morning, I realized that over the years, I have spent approx 14 weeks in Japan. I've lived in California for 8 years, but I've felt more earthquakes in Japan than I have in California.

But, whenever I talk to people who live Back East, they always ask me, "Aren't you afraid of the earthquakes?" I always say, "Um, no. I'd rather have earthquakes that happen occasionally than the guaranteed-every-year tornadoes and blizzards. Plus, there are earthquakes in the Midwest, too!

ps. Cheryl posted about last night's Tokyo earthquake over at the Sonos-in-Japan-2009 blog.

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