I am alive

I just looked at CNN.com and realized this whole Japan earthquake thing has gotten a lot of international press. So I figured I would let everyone know that I am safe. I actually didnt even feel the earthquake. It was in a town called Niigata. Niigata is about 200 miles northwest of tokyo. Osaka is about 200 miles southeast of Tokyo.

I do have a friend however that lives right outside of Niigata. He said it was about 20 seconds of his apartment shaking so hard he thought it was going to collapse. He also said lots of buildings in his town were either hurt or destroyed.

So while we are on subject I figured Id write a blog post about earthquakes in Japan.

Here is an article from CNN.com which has some interesting facts.

Japan, situated on the "Ring of Fire" arc of volcanoes and ocean trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin, accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
• A tremor occurs in Japan at least every five minutes, and each year there are up to 2,000 quakes that can be felt by people.
I always feel these small shakes in my bed at night. I thought it was just in my head.
• The Great Kanto earthquake of September 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9, killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. Seismologists have said another such quake could strike the city at any time.
This is a pretty big fear around the Tokyo area. Its the theory that Tokyo has a huge earthquake once about every 100 years. So since its been about 80 years they are due for another big one.
• On January 16, 1995, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit central Japan, devastating the western port city of Kobe. It was the worst earthquake to hit Japan in 50 years, killing more than 6,400 and causing an estimated $100 billion in damage.
Kobe is in my area of the country. This earthquake actually did some damage to the town I live in. Many of my students have stories about where they were when this happened. There is also a memorial every year to remember the victims. They decorate the whole town in these bright christmas light looking things. I really want to go next year its supposed to be beautiful.
• On October 23, 2004, a 6.8 magnitude quake struck the Niigata region, about 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, killing 65 people and injuring 3,000.
• On March 25, 2007, a 6.9 magnitude quake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture, about 300 km west of Tokyo, killing one person, injuring more than 200 and destroying hundreds of homes.
I actually felt this one. I was sitting in the office of my school. The funny part was I ran to the closest window (out of instinct I guess) so that I would have a way to jump out if the building collapsed.
* The Tokyo metropolitan government said in March 2006 that a magnitude 7.3 earthquake under Tokyo would probably kill more than 5,600 people and injure almost 160,000. Official estimates of economic damage have topped more than $1 trillion.
• German insurer Munich Re was even more pessimistic, saying in 2004 that a severe earthquake in the Tokyo-Yokohama area would kill hundreds of thousands of people, cause damage running into trillions of dollars and have global economic repercussions.
• The Tokyo-Yokohama metropolis, with a population of 35 million, has the highest "at risk" rating from natural disasters such as earthquakes of any of the world's 30 "megacities", the report said.
This is actually pretty scary when you really think about it. I have never been to Tokyo but from my understanding its basically a city of 30 million people living in buildings built as cheap and as quickly as possible since most of Tokyo was destroyed during the war. Also when the Kobe earthquake happened it caused a massive decrease in the Japanese economy. If the same thing happened to Tokyo, especially this day in age, it really could cause some huge problems.

As scary as it is though, you have to remember this is part of living in Japan. Japanese people are just as scared of earthquakes as anyone else, maybe more scared actually. But they don't have a choice, this is where they live, they have to deal with it.