abroadinjapan

The Worst Earthquake I've Ever Experienced Happened Last Night

Added 2021-02-14 11:31:36 +0000 UTC

So last night I was tucked up in a hotel bed on my way back from Hokkaido, falling asleep while pondering how to make the world a better place, when all of a sudden I began to feel dizzy.

I suddenly realised the entire building was moving and given I was on the 12th floor, rather than violent shaking the sensation you typically experience during an earthquake, it was more akin to ominous swaying.

Usually an earthquake lasts 10-15 seconds, but this time after 30 seconds of progressively more shaking and swaying I was starting to panic. Particularly as I remembered Natsuki’s prophecy of a large earthquake in the coming years that’d rival March 2011.

Fortunately, as I threw on my clothes and stood in the door way, the swaying gradually came to an end, with the sound of creaking and banging replaced with my phone vibrating, as it lit up amongst a sea of messages from friends dotted across Japan. Soon scary footage of people capturing their homes falling apart began to spread (https://twitter.com/himei42/status/1360595666775379971?s=20).

And while luckily, Natsuki’s prophecy of a world ending earthquake hadn’t come true, the earthquake was still a rather frightening magnitude 7.1, just off the coast of Miyagi prefecture.

In fact, rather creepily if you look at the epicentre, by a weird twist of fate, the closest spot in Japan to where it occurred is exactly the very street market Ryotaro and I visited in last week’s video!

And speaking of Ryotaro, his shattered clock wasn’t so lucky, as you can see in the photo below.

Of the many earthquakes I’ve experienced over the years, yesterday’s was easily the most frightening.

100 people were injured, the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Sendai remains closed and many folks in the Tohoku region were given an eerie reminder of what happened almost exactly 10 years next month. In fact, yesterday’s earthquake has been described as an aftershock of that distant event.

Last night serves as a fantastic reminder of Japan’s architectural genius, as thousands of buildings from Sendai to Tokyo shook violently without any serious destruction or collapsed buildings, with temporary power outages being the main cause of concern for folks living in the greater Tokyo area. Hopefully the country will be back to normal by tomorrow.

On a more positive note, I’m now finally back from the Hokkaido trip and for the most part, it was a success -as you’ll see in a few weeks.

I’ll admit, Japan’s most northern point felt like a different country, as blocks of ice began to appear floating in the sea and the coastline turned to ice. For hours upon end we drove across endless nothingness and felt like we were at the edge of the world. It all felt a bit like a mini Journey Across Japan episode and you can check out the crazy photos from the road trip below.

I hope I can do the trip justice in the edit, but before then we still have an episode inside the traditional Kyoto townhouses (next up), a Q&A episode and another trip with Ryotaro around the best Ryokan we’ve ever stayed in to date (an impressive title given that’s essentially all Ryotaro and I do in every video).

So plenty to look forward to this month folks and I’m currently planning a live show later this week on Abroad Perspective.

I hope you’ve all had a great weekend - I’m off to buy Ryotaro a new clock.
Chris

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HOKKAIDO ROAD TRIP
My erstwhile companion Pete is a presenter on NHK and holds the title of being my best American friend.
He's also from Kansas, so you can expect lots of jokes about the Wizard of Oz in this one. In fact, the whole bloody trip felt worryingly reminiscent of the journey made in the Wizard of Oz.