Earthquakes

There's not a lot you can do about earthquakes, so in my mind its not really worth worrying about them to much. They're quite common (Japan experiences about 20% of the worlds earthquakes annually) and to be honest most of the time they're over before you can start thinking about what's going on. Many a time I've woken up in the middle of the night or the early morning with my bed rocking (no dirty jokes here please, we're still talking about earthquakes) but after 2-3 seconds they tend to stop and I head back to sleep only to check with other teachers or students the next day if it really happened or if it was just part of a dream.
But this week we're had quite a lot, it all started on Thursday (May 8th). The biggest was a 6.7 at about 1:45 am, but what was strange this time was that it lasted a lot longer than all the others I've felt. About 6-7 seconds at a guess. There was a 6.2 before the main quake and it was also followed by a number of aftershocks nearly as big as the original. Then there were 3 more yesterday, 5.7 4.5 and 3.5 on the Richter Scale.
The only reported injury I've seen is a teenager was hurt when his stereo speakers fell on him! but if you shift the epicenter towards Tokyo a bit and up the level by .1 or .2 there'll be trouble. Here's a few news story extracts to give you an idea...

'A 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked central Japan in July last year, killing 11 people and shutting down the world's largest nuclear power plant owned by TEPCO...A 7.3-magnitude earthquake in Tokyo could kill 4,700 people, damage 440,000 buildings and leave thousands of others trapped in elevators, according to a study published by the government in 2006.'

So there's something to think about eh!
I'll do another update soon with a less serious topic. In brief, since my last post I've turned 27, been to Enoshima, seen mount Fuji up close, and wandered around two lakes.