Tectonic Titillation

With reluctance, I edge closer and closer to consciousness. It is Saturday morning, I don't know what time. My mind is foggy with drowsiness but begins to clear exponentially when I realize that my bed is shaking. It takes me two or three seconds - almost an eternity - to fully realize the movements; my bed has a tendency to rock a bit if you bang into it or if my roommate is moving about in his bed as well. But my bed is rocking continuously in a rhythmic motion, swaying side to side. I do not have my glasses on and am quite near-sighted, so it is hard to orient myself with my room, but I can feel rather than see that my room - no, the whole building - is swaying back and forth in a low frequency, low period oscillation; back and forth, back and forth. At some moments I can feel myself rise and fall slightly, ever so slightly, almost as if I was on a small boat on a relatively calm body of water, the waves lapping and gently rocking me from side to side. Without my glasses, the whole experience is disorienting. The room mirrors the movements of my mind, which is swirling back and forth, up and down, trying to make sense of what I am experiencing, sleepiness still fogging my brain. It is almost like when I drank a couple of drinks too many one night and was a little tipsy, the ground sometimes swaying under me as I walked with Ara back to the parking garage on our way back to Ithaca campus. Except this is a continuous feeling of tipsiness. I am struggling through all of this for what must have been about six seconds.

Eventually the word earthquake runs through my head, and suddenly I am wide awake, breathing short, shallow breaths, and trying to decide what to do. I pull the blinds open on my window, right next to my bed, peering outside with my near-sighted eyes, not daring to climb down the ladder of my bunked bed to retrieve my glasses. I can still feel myself swaying gently, and even though I can't make out the details of the apartments just outside my window I know for certain that I am swaying. I am on the third story and I can below that a guy has stopped suddenly in his tracks, staring in the direction of my building, and then he quickly runs out of sight. I am repeatedly asking myself, "Is this real? Am I awake? Is this really an earthquake?"

After some time - it was probably thirty seconds in total but it felt like five minutes - the swaying had finally stopped, although I was afraid it would start again any moment. My roommate, who is a pretty heavy sleeper, rolls in his bed in half-consciousness, never fully awakening to the morning tremors. I sit in my bed, staring out the window to reassure myself that the world has stopped swaying, and my mind races back to freshman year of high school, when Mrs. Paul was teaching us about earthquakes, and sharing a story of an earthquake she experienced while in Japan. I tried to decide what to do; should I climb down from my bed? Will there be an after shock? Should I stand in the doorway? Should I wake my roommate?

Earthquakes, as I am trying to remember from almost seven years ago, usually come in three distinct waves; there's the primary shock wave, the secondary, and tertiary aftershocks. The primary waves travel the fastest, and they usually cause the least amount of damage. The secondary waves are slower and in speed, but are usually much stronger in magnitude are usually the ones responsible for property damage. The two waves can ofter overlap, especially as you get closer to the epicenter - the center of the earthquake. Afterwards there are often numerous aftershocks as the earth finishes adjusting itself and relieving pressure; these after shocks are usually weaker but that doesn't mean they can't be dangerous.

I remember that one type of wave oscillates horizontally, and the other one vertically. I am frantically trying to remember which one is which, and trying to decide if what I felt was just horizontal or a mixture of the two. I can't remember. I am not sure if the relatively mild swaying that woke me up mean that the worst is over, or a herald of imminent destruction. Sometimes knowing too much...and knowing how little you know...can be a frightening position.

All of this mental debate stretches over another 30 long seconds as I climb down from my bunked bed and stand at the window...probably not a good idea. I decide if I begin to feel any more tremors I will immediately move to the doorway - about ten feet away - and wake my roommate up. I put my glasses on and grab my watch. It is 8:45am. But my fears and planning are for naught; I stand at the window staring outside for another ten or fifteen minutes, and all is peaceful in Akita.

There are parts of me that are still not sure if I maybe am still dreaming. But most of me is wide awake. I am thinking of all the nearby volcanoes, wondering if one of them might of erupted. Chokai-san, about 70-80km to the south of us, is a volcano - I think - though I am not sure when it last erupted; probably not for a while. There's also a few in nearby Iwate to the east of us, not that far away. I think back to my trip to Hokkaido and my visit to Usu-zan in Lake Toya region, but decide that's way too far and too soon to be right. Plus, a volcano doesn't necessarily need to be involved. But in my mind I keep playing over and over the videos of the past eruptions of Usu-zan - the last time being only 8 years ago - and try to remind myself that I am being silly.

Ridiculously, I turn on my computer and check some of the usual news sites I peruse every morning, including NYTimes, Japan Times and CNN. Of course, there's nothing on there; I haven't been up for 20 minutes and even in today's information highway age news doesn't travel THAT fast. I laugh at myself, but also ponder the ill effects of being cultured to have access to news and information almost instantaneously, and I note my disappointment at not finding any news story. Still, part of me just wants to confirm that I did just experience an earthquake, and wanted to know the where's and why's of it all.

Part of me is ridiculously disappointed. All in all, the experience was mild and benign. Just some swaying back and forth and a feeling of disorientation. I am simultaneously excited that I have experienced a singularly Japanese experience (Japan is one of the most geologically active regions of the world), but also disappointed that there wasn't more...adventure. Again, I am sobered by the realization that the US media has conditioned me to such a high degree of sensationalism; nothing short of property damage would have made me feel like I experienced a "real" earthquake. I find this thought disturbing. My mind is swaying again, oscillating between shock -holy crap, I just lived through an earthquake - and disbelief - that was it?

About an hour later my roommate finally wakes up. I decide not to say anything in case I really did make it all up - I'm that unsure of myself. But soon he gets a phone call from a friend of his who tells him that there was in fact an earthquake, a whopping 7.0 one in Iwate prefecture (just to the east of us). Upon hearing this I share my story and feel a bit more validated. I check through my news sites again. It is about 10:30, almost two hours later and still NYTimes and CNN don't have anything up. Not surprisingly, though, BBC has a news story on their home page. I quickly devour the short news story, and over the next half hour I start seeing other stories pop up over the internet.

It's around 2:00pm here in Japan now. Here are links to the CNN and BBC articles on the earthquake. There are some conflicting information on the exact magnitude and epicenter location, but the main ideas are basically the same. The quake hit around 8:45am, the epicenter was near the southern Akita/Iwate Prefectural border, and was between 6.9 and 7.0 in magnitude. The BBC article places the epicenter close to the town of Yuzuwa, which is in Akita Prefecture and just over 50 kilometers southeast of AIU (about 30 miles). Apparently the quake could be felt as far away as Tokyo (390 km or about 240 miles from the epicenter), and there were some deaths and property damage. Being relatively close to the epicenter, I feel pretty lucky that my experience was so mild. The recent earthquake in China was an 8.0, which means it was 10 times stronger than this one in Japan; that's still nothing to sneeze at.

I grabbed some lunch around 11:00. Everything was bright and clear and just as normal as it was yesterday. There was a slightly subdued energy in the students I saw in the cafeteria, but other than that there was nothing remarkable in the aftermath of the earthquake here at AIU. I do distinctly remember when I was sitting at my computer around 12:00 that I felt a slight sway in the floor that caused my chair - which sits on wheels - to slide to the left. But other than that very minor shockwave, so far (as of 2:00pm Saturday) there have not been any more tremors that I could feel.

It was, all in all, a very benign experience, but still something that I will never forget. It is still hard to believe, as I push against the seemingly solid walls of my room, that these buildings - which in my imagination are rigid and strong - had swayed so easily and smoothly early this morning. Well, at least that's one more experience I can check off as a Japan tourist. See you all next week.