We Live Where We Are

Not the Big One

Two days ago Miyagi was hit by a magnitude 6-7 earthquake. Juli's brother Joe and his friend Seth are out visiting us, and when the quake hit we were sitting around the TV nurturing our nostalgia with a few clumsy rounds of Street Fighter II. The rolling started, I rushed to turn off the gas, and we all hung tight under our respective doorways. The shaking was largely side to side at first, but the quake ended with up-and-down shudders, the kind that topple buildings. It seemed to last for about 40 seconds or so.

When a quake hits, the fear I feel is never about the present moment, but about how bad the situation could possibly become. You never know how long it will last or how strong it will get.

The epicenter was in southern Iwate and the strongest area hit was a town in northern Miyagi called Kurihara. The scary thing is, that morning we were planning on going up to that area to visit our friend Aaron and go to an onsen. Had we gotten an early start, we probably would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere until the next day. All but one of the train lines out of Sendai were shut down for hours while inspectors scoured the tracks for damage. The train stations were all crowded with stranded passengers and the bus services were undoubtedly making a killing.

Things here return to normal pretty quickly after a quake, so while we couldn't make it out of town, we spent the day hotfooting it from place to place around Sendai. Yesterday the trains were running again, so we made it out to Yamadera, a mountainside temple/shrine complex that was built around AD 900.

While this quake was fairly large, Miyagi is anticipating the return of a massive off-shore earthquake that shakes things up about every 30 years. I hope we're long gong by the time that one hits.