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moon in the water Blog Tools Rating: Rate This Blog
Creation Date: 04-26-2010 10:46 PM
niall
Offline
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the water does not try
to reflect the moon
and the moon has no desire
to be reflected
but when the clouds clear
there is the moon in the water
Blog Info
Status: Public
Entries: 155
Comments: 1,111
Views: 1,923,848

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In Miscellaneous Earthquake Entry Tools Rating: 5 Stars!
  #47 New 03-13-2011 12:00 AM
Earthquake I live just outside Tokyo, several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake in Miyagi. We are far from the devastation and the tragedy. The photo (see details below) is a train forlornly stopped at an empty station. So this post is only about my personal experience and earthquakes in Japan, not about the terrible events still happening in the north of the country. These are the Yahoo and CNN links with information for people who want to help:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsro...mi-how-to-help

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/13...-you-can-help/

Please do what you can to help. In this thread and this thread Francis Takahashi Sensei and others are trying to find ways that the aikido community can help.




Everyone in Japan knows what to do in an earthquake. There is an earthquake day - disaster prevention day - on 1 September, the anniversary of the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. Schools and businesses have regular earthquake drills.

You learn the basic rules:

1.Turn off the gas and any appliances which could cause a fire to start.
2.Immediately secure an exit. Walls can buckle with the movement of the earth and you might not be able to open a door.
3.Stay away from the danger of falling objects - if necessary get under a table. If you have a helmet put it on.
4.Then after a really serious earthquake stay away from buildings - because of the danger of falling glass or debris - and get to a designated safe open space.

Japan is a country of earthquakes. There were two especially devastating earthquakes in the last century. In 1923 there was the Great Kanto earthquake. It happened at midday when people were preparing lunch and so many fires started. More than 100,000 people died. Then in 1995 there was the Kobe earthquake. More than 6,000 people died.

So Japanese building standards are very strict. From the wikipedia article about the Kobe earthquake: High rise buildings that were built after the modern 1981 building code suffered little, however those that were not constructed to these standards suffered serious structural damage.

Many homes and workplaces have earthquake kits. An earthquake kit is a backpack with essential supplies like dried food, a torch, a radio, bottled water and maybe a helmet and a foil blanket.

There was an earthquake in Japan on Wednesday 9 March. Sometimes an earthquake is a sign of a bigger one coming. That's what it was. A foreshock. Then at 2.46 pm on Friday 11 March the big earthquake struck. I was on the ground floor. The floor started swaying and there was a continuous loud noise from outside like a storm wind blowing fiercely. Usually earthquakes are over in a few seconds but this one went on and on. We all knew this was a big one. I went over to the door and opened it so that we had an exit. Everyone was very, very concerned. Finally, finally, minutes later, the tremors stopped. We all got out. Everyone was talking excitedly. We tried to telephone our family members. But cellular networks were already down. They stayed down for many hours.

All transport in an out of Tokyo stopped. A friend who was in his car took many hours to drive 4 or 5 kilometers. All my family members finally, finally managed to get home at 2.30 pm on Saturday 13 March. Twenty-four hours later. And at last we heard from a friend who had been visiting her family in Sendai. She and her family and her home were safe. We haven't been able to speak to her yet. We had almost no damage - but one friend who lives on the third floor had considerable damage inside his apartment. Aftershocks have continued through the night of Saturday 12 and today Sunday 13.

There is no point in me talking about the disaster that is still unfolding. News is changing hour by hour. But a worry for everyone is the safety of the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. Unbelievably as the seriousness of the situation became clearer Yahoo Japan was repeatedly playing a cute cartoon commercial about the benefits of nuclear energy.

Our prayers go out to everyone affected, expecially those still waiting for help to arrive.

wikipedia articles about earthquakes and Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Gr...%8D_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_construction

Japan's preparedness for earthquakes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_sci_ja...hquake_science

article from the LA Times: Japan's massive earthquake has little effect on culture's impeccable manners
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4238012.story

Johnny Cash Hurt a poignant song about pain and loss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22eIJDtKho


photo by Hideya Hamano: train stopped at Ochanomizu station (9.0 magnitude quake in Japan) http://www.flickr.com/photos/mawari/5517686930/ photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/mawari/with/5517686930/ used under creative commons licence


© niall matthews 2011
Views: 6020 | Comments: 9


RSS Feed 9 Responses to "Earthquake"
#9 03-16-2011 05:50 AM
niall Says:
Thanks, Graham.
#8 03-15-2011 10:13 PM
I'm glad you're ok, Niall.
#7 03-14-2011 07:28 AM
niall Says:
Cheers, Chris, I really hope so too. All the best, Niall
#6 03-14-2011 02:59 AM
chris wright Says:
I'm glad to hear you and your family are well, my first thoughts when i saw the news on Friday were of your safety. My heart goes out to all those suffering, and i hope things start to improve soon.
#5 03-13-2011 08:15 PM
niall Says:
Thank you Francis for your calm and wise leadership.
#4 03-13-2011 08:12 PM
aikishihan Says:
Thank you Niall, for your first hand accounts of how Nature can so instantly impact man's existence. We must gather ourselves as a species to regain our rightful place in the order of the Universe. Many individuals throughout the world are organizing benefits andother fund raising events Let us identify and join such groups in the weeks and months to come to make a difference. Let us begin today.
#3 03-13-2011 08:12 PM
niall Says:
I added the CNN link on how people can help to the Yahoo link above. Here also is the British Red Cross link: http://www.redcross.org.uk/japantsun...861_twitljapan
#2 03-13-2011 08:03 PM
niall Says:
Thanks for translating this Carina. Today was a very quiet, waiting day. Trains were running skeleton services if at all. Many people stayed at home. There were supposed to be rolling power cuts of about four hours to conserve electricity throughout the day today but they didn't materialize.
#1 03-13-2011 03:36 PM
guest1234567 Says:
Thanks Niall. I'm very impressed about the good behaviour of japanese people in that bad circumstances not only in the interesting article you found in the LA Times. We were talking about that today with my collegues too, what we saw in the TV, how they are waiting in a line in the supermarket and for taking the train when it started to go again.
 




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