Three days ago the biggest worry I had was where to park my bike… Now I have a brand new worry, EARTHQUAKES!

During training we felt a couple of them.  They just made me feel a bit odd and dizzy, in fact I didn’t even realise they were earthquakes whilst they were happening. 

The ones we’ve had over the last few days in Wakayama are different. They sound like a growling monster trying to escape from underground and are followed by violent shaking. My apartment block is basically like one big portaloo so feels like it’s going to topple over when a lorry goes past, let alone when the earth starts moving…

The first night we felt earthquakes I was sitting around in my pants (it’s dead sweaty here!) and ran around the apartment trying to find clothes because the thought of being dragged out of the rubble on national TV in my underwear was my first concern.  I then decided I should put together a list of what I need to take should I ever have to evacuate.  Before I had finished the list there was another earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1, Wakayama City was the epicenter.  Although not MASSIVE, for somebody on their own who has just moved to a foreign country and has no previous earthquake experience it’s super fucking scary and I felt so unprepared (the earthquake display at the Natural History Museum has nothing on the real thing)!  I quickly grabbed some stuff and headed to one of the other teacher’s houses (whilst I was packing there were 2 more of the fuckers!) where we googled earthquakes, ate hot cakes with maple syrup and listened to happy time music.

The next day every time I heard a rumble my heart just stopped.  By the evening I had scared myself stupid so sat up reading a trashy novel until 3am. I was literally just falling asleep when the underground monster reared it’s ugly fat head again.  This time it wasn’t as scary but more of an inconvenience because I was in my loft bed and had to climb down to check reports to make sure it wasn’t enough to wash my portaloo like home down the hill.

I now felt like I was getting quite use to earthquakes, but the next one caught me unaware…  

The following evening it was raining heavily (typhoon season, yay!) and I was biking to meet friends for dinner.  I attempted the Japanese way of carrying my umbrella whilst biking but it didn’t go very well so I decided to put it in my front basket and just get soaked.  EARTHQUAKE! I lost control of my bike and the umbrella somehow fell out of my basket and mangled itself into my front wheel.  Luckily it happened in slow motion so I didn’t fall off but I did look like a total Western retard trying to get the umbrella untangled - in the end it took 2 Japanese salary men to get the umbrella out and they had a massive LOL fest at the stupid foreigner.

Apparently it’s all pretty normal here in Wakayama and although my earthquake experiences so far haven’t been too traumatic or serious they’ve certainly put me in my place and made me more prepared.  I’ve put together some supplies near my front door should I ever need to evacuate, I’ve located where I need to go if there’s a tsunami near my house or any of my schools and I’ve even balanced my laptop so that it has no direction to fall in (unless the air conditioner falls off the wall and then it’s game over).  This has also become a new ‘favourite’ - http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/.

FML.