On Friday morning I was rudely awoken by an earthquake. How cheeky? What on earth does it think it is doing waking up an Englishman who only went to bed a few hours before it decided to strike. It measured 5.1 on the Richter scale and centered around Tochigi prefecture.

Oddly this was not the first earthquake of the night, as one had hit the Izu peninsula a few hours before sending some of the news stations into mild panic. The news reports served as some ominous foretelling as the rest of Tokyo and the surrounding areas were to be jolted into the early morning a few hours later.

Anyway, it was a highly surreal, comical and a slightly scary moment all rolled into one. I woke up at around quarter to 6 local time here in Kawasaki and had a weird sensation of 'why have I just woken up'? I then rested my head and then felt my bed start to shake, like someone was at the other end shaking the foot of it. My head-rest rattled and I felt the windows shaking.

Because I was half asleep it was only about a few seconds into it, I realised that this was an earthquake. It never really got going and lasted for about ten seconds at the most. None of my stuff fell over and to be honest the thunderstorm I had a few months ago felt a lot worse. But the most frightening experience of it all was actually when it ended. I was thinking to myself, is this is? What now? I sat lying in bed trying to go bck to bed, but couldn't due to a sense of fear and a strange curiosity.


This was my first earthquake experience in japan and although it was a fairly mild one (5.1 on the Richter scale) it still left me feeling slightly shocked for a few hours. Because the place I live in is staffed mostly by Japanese and the odd Indonesian - those guys being fairly used to having earthquakes so the majority of the 'relaying' came from my fellow exchange students, which ranged from 'couldn't give a toss and I went back to bed' to 'I hid next to the door'.

Last year in Sheffield we experienced a similar earthquake which hit 5.1 on the Richter scale and produced similar results (i.e. no real major damage but slightly mild panic.) I also vaguely remember experiencing one in Cyprus as a small child, although that was so long ago the memory has faded. In many ways after experiencing a typhoon in October and now an earthquake I feel as I am really enjoying the Japanese experience, albeit a slightly obscure one.

All this pails into insignificance and stupid ramblings though, as Taiwan - which suffered an absolutely devastating quake in 1999 has just had a much stronger earthquake hit. And likewise the typhoon I experienced (which really was more of a tropical depression) was nothing to the one that hit the Philippines weeks earlier.