Gakusei Travels

地震が起きた!

Disclaimer before anyone reads this, so that I do not cause any widespread panic, first and foremost I am safe. My friends and I are okay.

This morning, around 6:31AM JST, I had the pleasure of being startled awake by my phone screaming at me that there was an earthquake. Now, back home, we don’t have earthquakes in the Midwest. Even when I was in California during the summer, I hadn’t, luckily, experienced one. So being woken out of your sleep by your phone issuing what’s basically an amber alert, is terrifying. On top of that, my roommate’s phone was issuing the same alarm, so the two of us were groggy, confused, and concerned.

If anyone is curious, this is what the earthquake alarm sounded like. How am I supposed to not panic when hearing that?

Since it woke literally everyone up, Sam started texting me in a panic asking “what do we do? There’s an earthquake!” Again, I’ve never been through a serious earthquake before. Japan actually gets them so frequently, because the country is over active tectonic plates. Mini ones are so common that they basically happen on a daily basis all over the country. Actually, a couple weeks ago, I felt one for the first time. It was around 1 AM and all of a sudden, my bed just started vibrating. I was so confused and thought I imagined it. Nope. It was a magnitude 2 earthquake. Most of the time, they don’t warrant any concern, but this was the first time I had ever gotten an alert on my phone.

Although I was internally panicking, I was trying my best to be somewhat logical, or as logical as I could while being groggy. I could barely see anything on my phone as I was looking at NHK Japan for any updates. I use that news outlet to get most of my updates regarding weather, earthquakes, and Japan. My two main questions were:

1. where was the earthquake?
2. are we in immediate danger and need to evacuate?

The earthquake that hit was a magnitude of 5.9. It occurred in Ishikawa Prefecture. My geography of Japan is bad, so I’m not familiar with the prefectures outside of Tokyo, but the earthquake occurred more on the western coast. Tokyo is on the east. Still, there’s the chance to feel aftershocks. I watched the news for about 30 minutes, checking for updates about areas experiencing aftershocks. Tokyo-to never came up as an area of concern, so I updated Sam that we were safe and tried to go back to bed.

Keyword, tried.

I think I was so tense and my adrenaline was rushing from being startled awake that I couldn’t truly fall back asleep. Thankfully, my first class isn’t until 10:30, because I don’t think I would’ve made it if I had a first period class. T^T. My alarm lowkey scared me when it went off at 8:30 cause my immediate thought was “oh god not again.” So wish me luck. It’s going to be a long day. I’m going to need a lot of coffee to make it through.

NHK World Japan Today’s Earthquake – https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240603_06/