So You've Experienced Your First Earthquake...

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it happened.  I was in an earthquake.  I am obviously alive to tell the tale, and tell it I will....

[screen turns wavy and blurry as it fades out]

It had been a long day, possibly because I had gotten up at 5am, and the day had included a lot of walking whilst exploring my neighbourhood, as well as getting completely lost at Ikebukuro Station (the second busiest train station in the world), which I had not yet discovered is HUGE, and getting home at 10:30ish after a night of fun with church friends.  I stayed up a couple more hours before finally retiring for the night.

So there I was at 1:30am, lying asleep in my futon, when suddenly the bed frame starts to shake.  In fact everything shakes, and there's a loud noise like a train going past.  After a few seconds I finally conclude, in my heavily sleep-induced state, that it is in fact not a train but an earthquake.  "Your first small earthquake, cool right?" I ask myself.  "Yeah, yeah..." my sleepy self replies.  "Wait...how do I know it's going to be a small one?  WHAT IF IT BECOMES A BIG ONE?!"  It is at this point that I decide that it might be a good idea to find shelter somewhere.  I chose the large cupboard area under my bed.  

"Do I have to?" I feel my body ask, as I drag it out of bed.  I wanted to turn on the light, being pitch black and all, but wonder if that's a no-no in earthquakes, and decide I'm better safe than sorry.  By the time I have gotten out of bed, the shaking has stopped.  I go out to the hallway and grab my unstrategically placed torch, and head to the underworld of my bed.  With the earthquake over, I soon decide there's not much point sheltering anymore, and wonder if small earthquakes have after-shocks...I crawl back into my futon, with my torch by my side, and soon find myself wondering if it was all just a dream.

But this link proves indeed not, with information regarding the earthquake which was 5.2 magnitude, and states in my area of Nerima-ku it was 3 magnitude, which funnily is what I guessed it would have been - see, I'm good at this already!  

I spent a fair chunk of this evening researching all things earthquake and have learnt the following: 

- it was probably better to stay in bed and cover my head with my pillows, until the quake is over;

- if not in bed, drop to the ground, find some sort of shelter and hold on;

- small earthquakes can have aftershocks...in fact, they may actually be foreshocks to a bigger earthquake, so I should probably be a bit more aware;

- it's probably a good idea to get an evacuation pack ready in case of a big one;

- there are many varying causes of earthquakes;

- there's a high risk area known as the Pacific Ring of Fire (and now I can't stop singing "down, down, down, in a burning ring of fire...");

- earthquakes can also happen in the centre of tectonic plates, but these are very rare;

- most injuries from earthquakes are caused by falling objects and debris;

- earthquakes are pretty much unpredictable...kinda scary!

- I am not invincible (it was hard to admit this one).

Having been half-asleep for this experience I am interested to see how I react to one when I am fully awake.  I only have a vague memory of what it really felt like at the time, basically just that I knew it was an earthquake and that I didn't hear any rattling of objects like you see in the movies.  Being from Australia, the centre of a tectonic plate, I have no previous experience at all of earthquakes.  But having had 2 earthquakes here in the last 2 weeks, there's probably plenty more where that came from.