Earthquake

 I was going to finish writing about my trip to Tokyo, but we had an earthquake yesterday.

The earthquake was along the same fault as the 2016 earthquake. At the epicentre, it was an M7.1. That's big! Where we were, it was an M5; that is big as well.

Mikey had just started teaching two brothers, ages 5 and 3; they are really lovely boys, and I enjoy watching them! I was chatting with their father, talking about the weather. A city, just 44 minutes east of here by car, recorded a temperature of 40℃. We were talking about how crazy the weather had gotten over the past few years and joking that 32℃ now feels cool!

Suddenly the alarm on my phone started to sound. At first I was confused, as the alarms recently have been because of heavy rain, warning of landslides or flooding, but it wasn't raining. Then the alarm started to say, "Earthquake, Earthquake". After that, both Mikey's and the father's phones started to alert.

The whole building started to move. It's such a surreal experience! The building we were in is a modern structure; it feels solid, it feels as if nothing could move it, but there it was dancing back and forth!

The poor kids were really upset. Mikey held the younger one; he wanted to go to his dad, but during the strongest shaking, it's better not to move. The older boy held Mikey's hand. As soon as the shaking slowed down, the boys ran to their dad. He was very calm but looked worried. The kids recovered quickly; Mikey had them giggling and enjoying the lesson. My default reaction is panic, but I realised that it wouldn't help the kids and it doesn't change the situation.

The student's father checked his phone and found that the epicentre was in Kumamoto. He called his family, as his parents and sister live in that area.

I called Hannah. I was really worried about her. She was already stressed and fatigued; she has exams coming up. Stress and fatigue are what trigger her seizures. She was alright; she said that the alarm was scary, and it is! She hit her elbow as she got under her desk. I offered to go and pick her up if she was too worried, but she said she was alright. She said that if she doesn't do well on her exams, she can blame the stress from the earthquake!

David slept through it! Typical!

Christopher was at work. He said only a few things fell off the shelf. He had to check on customers to make sure everyone was okay.

There was an aftershock that sounded the alarm. There have been a lot of aftershocks, but we haven't felt them.

The situation in Kumamoto is bad. One large shopping mall, Aeon Mall, exploded. There is video showing the front of the building being blown out. The latest I heard is that at least 13 people died; I don't know if that is just at the mall or altogether. The news was in Japanese!

The next couple of weeks will be nerve-racking. I'm going on my experience from 10 years ago, but there seemed to be several large aftershocks for at least 2 weeks. 

We are all fine; our friends are all fine. Shaken and worried, but life goes on. My heart goes out to those in the area around the epicentre. According to the news, a lot of places lost power. In this extreme heat, that is going to be very hard! Also, I've seen videos of trains being toppled over- not one that was running; I think it was in a railway yard. Roads have buckled; some bridges have collapsed. The wall from Kumamoto Castle collapsed. The castle was severely damaged 10 years ago; now it's been hit again.

Even though I'm worried about more earthquakes, I'm a lot calmer this time round than 10 years ago. I watch the Japanese people, even my own kids and see how even though they are worried or upset, they just keep calm. There's a video showing people leaving the mall after the earthquake; they are clearly upset and stressed, but the evacuation is orderly, not running or pushing, just walking calmly and quickly to the exit. I need to learn how to do this!

If nothing else happens, I'll write about getting to the airport tomorrow!