For those of you wondering about the earthquakes, yes, I felt them, but no, I wasn't killed.
Amy and I were sitting here last Saturday evening watching a football game and enjoying a drink or two (or more for me) and out of nowhere Amy looked at me. It was one of those looks where you know you are in trouble for something; you're not sure what, but you know that look. So I looked back at her and said, "What?" with a kind of confused air to it.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "Are you shaking my chair?" She later admitted that she knew I wasn't close enough to be shaking her chair and when she looked around the room she, for a split second, wondered, "How is he doing that?"
Obviously in her mind I have a reputation for bothering her and at the same time she thinks that I possess abilities that only devine entities have. Not that I believe in those sorts of things.
But anyway, I said, "I'm not doing anything."
All this happened in about a second or two and then we both realized that the entire building was moving and that that could only mean one thing.
So we rode it out and the next two that followed within the half hour. They felt strong but not too much so. But due to my experience with earthquakes in both California and Japan (both times I have lived here) I thought, "That must have been a fairly strong one but must have been far away."
So as the football game we were watching was on tape I stopped it and turned the tv to the rabbit ears so that I could watch some local news. Sure enough they were covering the quakes and were showing footage from cameras mounted on buildings. That was when, through our mastery of the Japanese language and our excellent Kanji abilites, we figured out it was Niigata that received the brunt of the tremor. Niigata is the prefecture north of Nagano which is the prefecture northwest of us. So I pulled out my ruler and with that and the map on my wall I figured out the epicenter was about 200 to 300 miles away. Probably closer to 200. Anyway was rather destructive up there but down here in Yamanashi all is well. Except that now Amy isn't so sure about my god-like abilities.

So that was Saturday evening. But then yesterday, Wednesday, morning at about 1040am I was in class at Yuda (all girls). Class is from 955 to 1045. All was going well and we were finishing up when out of nowhere the girls screamed a bit and one of them got up and ran to the girl sitting behind her and they held hands. At this I stopped expounding my lessons on the finer points of English ("Shall we drink tea?") and looked at the other students. It was at this moment that I noticed the shaking and the teacher said to me, "Oh, earthquake" which I had figured out by this point but was thankful for the information nonetheless.
I have to admit though that this shaking was quite different than any I had felt before. It was strange. It was a much slower shaking and was very mild. But somehow I knew the quake wasn't exactly a small one (turns out it was 6.0 up in Niigata again). So here's my theory.....
The building we were in is a brand new one, as in it was built just this year. After they had finished this new building the old building at this school was renovated. Both are now being used. But one day while the old building was being worked on I asked Yazaki-sensei what they were doing. He told me that it was being renovated and was being made extra-strong for earthquakes. Made sense to me.
Now, fast forward to my busted Saturday out at the track in Suzuka. To fill the day Amy and I went to a science museum, one of those hands-on type things. They had different sections with different presentations. One section was on earthquakes and they had two miniature buildings that, when you pressed a button, would shake. But one building would shake much less and in a competely different manner than the other. Turns out that one was built normally, minus rollers under the building, and the other was built on these roller-type things. Imagine laying down a few pipes parallel to each other and then putting a box on top. Then imagine shaking the ground under this whole structure you've built. You can imagine that the box would shake much less and much differently than it might otherwise.
Anyway that's my theory for this new school building. Was quite cool to be in during a quake.
After it was all over I looked at the girl who had stood up and ran to her friend and said, "Ha. You think she can protect you during an earthquake?" But my English wasn't understood and I decided not to chide the obviously terrified girl any longer. My sense of humor is sometimes lost over here.

Ok, time to make dinner and watch more football.