Our family was enjoying a quiet Sunday evening in our Tokyo apartment preparing for our short trip to Singapore the next day when an earthquake hit Japan. The high rise building shook and our lighting fixture swayed for over a minute – it was very scary indeed!
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported a 6.9 magnitude earthquake occurred at 19:56 JST south of the Japan islands at a depth of 340 km. In Tokyo, a JMA Seismic Intensity of 4 was recorded, although it felt stronger than that.
No injuries or damage reported so far. No power or service interruptions in our building, TV and the Internet was still working so I went to Twitter and searched for “earthquake” and “Tokyo”.
You gotta love the post “Great instincts, Tokyo. First tweet, then duck for cover”. That’s too funny!
Exciting earthquake, wasn’t it? By the way, that should be 4 on the intensity scale. It’s not related to magnitude.
Yes, you are right – I corrected my blog post. Thanks.
Earthquake yesterday, typhoon tonight. It’s a Japanese disaster movie! Well, not really.
We flew from Tokyo to Singapore this morning in the pouring rain and it was the bumpiest airplane ride we have experienced ever.
We are now safely in Singapore and will be visiting this fair city/country for a few days.
I was wondering about that. You said you were flying today. Good thing you’re in Singapore safely. Enjoy Singapore!
By the way, it hasn’t rained much in the Tokyo area this afternoon or evening, but it’s supposed to be an incredible downpour in the next few hours.
Thanks – we did enjoy Singapore. We are safely back to Tokyo, hopefully, all the earthquakes have stopped.
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Scary stuff. Glad to hear that you and your family are safe. My wife’s aunt was living in Japan a few years ago, and in her first earthquake, in the wee hours, she left home in a hurry, wearing only her PJs, covered by a blanket, to find out that nobody else bothered going outside. Then she learned that most people in Japan are used to the small ones and don’t panick anymore.
I loved Singapore, I think you’ll enjoy it too.
We are safely back from Singapore (though not sure how safe in Tokyo) and we did enjoy it. Took lots of pictures, blog post to follow (although I am quite behind).
There were two earthquakes.
One on Sunday evening and the other on Monday night / Tuesday AM.
http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/disaster/
Make that 3. There was one Tuesday afternoon, too. It wasn’t as big, though.
Heh. There was a 4th and a 5th today. The one at 7am woke me up, but the one at 10:50am, I didn’t feel. bartman, you’re missing all the fun!
Wow, 5 in total, I guess we missed all the fun (well, maybe not too fun).
Are we all worried that the next big one will hit soon … I just read http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090813/wl_asia_afp/japanquake.
I don’t even think about the big one. When I lived in Victoria, they were always talking about the big one (about 9.0). The west coast has historically had a very large magnitude 9 earthquake every 300 years. The last one was 1700. The big one is now overdue there. But I never really worried, because it’s something that’s extremely difficult to predict. If it comes, it comes
I cannot believe this is true!