Shake, rattle, and roll

J85 Monday July 16th

Monday was beautiful, despite the rain-soaked monotony of the previous day. All the pollutants had been swept from the sky by the wind and rain, and there were only a few clouds in the sky. It was gorgeous.

In the morning, whilst making my Internet rounds, I felt the first of the day's earthquakes. It wasn't much here in Hitachi, but elsewhere such was not the case. Several dead, hundreds wounded, and many, many houses leveled by the quake. My heart goes out to those struck by this earthquake, for to them it truly was a disaster.

However, uninformed as I was, I went about my day as normal. K and I met up around 2 to have Brush Club. Neither of us were too into it, given the beauty of the day, and we wound up shopping for the next few hours. We trundled up to Sakura City to investigate their 1000 yen shop, which had been closed down. Next to it, though, was a crafts store. For those of you who know me well, you know that crafting has been a favorite hobby of mine for quite some time. You may also imagine my poor Japanese skills making finding such a place difficult, if not impossible. So, sitting before me was a store filled with things that give me a tactile sense of joy.

I was a very happy boy.

After perusing there for a while, and hitting Sakura City's 100 yen store, we went back to the Ito Yokado food court for the Japanese Lesson. The crowd was small; only myself, K, Matt (the newish Nova teacher) and Bastion (A gentleman-researcher at Ibaraki University from...Slovania, I think? Awesome accent).

We pulled from a book I had brought with me, a grammar book that one can use to teach one's self Japanese. It was quite useful; we'd been running out of concrete linguistics to study in the Lesson as of late, and the group was starting to lose focus.

After the lesson we all parted ways. I myself headed back home to relax and play some Neverwinter Nights. I'd installed it the day before to help assuage my boredom, but repeated crashes and other frustrating bugs turned it into an unhappy experience. My intellect was stimulated, though, and I tackled the problem with renewed vigor. A few software upgrades and some quick prayers later, it seemed to work.

That evening, my Mom called to check up on me. She had heard about the quake, and wanted to make sure I wasn't under a building somewhere. I told her that I was fine, after which she informed me of the quake's damage. I told her I was ok, and that I loved her.

Then, not 10 minutes after I'd hung up, we felt two more earthquakes. These were stronger than the one this morning by a factor of two, easily. My entire apartment building wobbled, this time, and my toaster oven skidded off its perch atop my microwave (which is atop my minifridge, a perilous pile of potable preparation, I know, but space is at a premium here).

The first one was so strong I decided to pack a quick emergency kit. My backpack was hastily packed with some extra clothes, my journal, my lighter (always with me) my hankerchief, and a few other elements necessary should the world radically shift into a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic wasteland. The second quake came shortly thereafter, but was much smaller.

Nothing happened afterwards, to my relief, but my emergency kit was next to my bed all through the night.

I got to bed around 2AM, as is my custom.


This morning, there was an earthquake. Not big from where I was, just an extended wobble of my apartment, but enough to be felt. I heard that it caused quite a bit of damage elsewhere, though, which does make me sad.

Monday was beautiful