24. Juli 2005 | 
Autor: Yesterday while on the phone with my mum I was suddenly forced to hang up, when the beginning of an earthquake interrupted our call. When things started to fall off the shelves and the floor to shake so much you could not stand straight anymore, I decided to join my fellow housemates and run out of the building.
As I read today in the newspaper, it was a magnitude 6 on the richter scala or an upper 5 out of 7 on the Japanese scale (7 being the “Big One”, that everyone is expecting some day in Tokyo). Very close to Tokyo, 72km under surface. The government set the earthquake as an “A-level” risk, which is the highest one. The last time Tokyo was shook so much was 13 years ago, in 1992.
Right after the quake all metro lines and trains where halted for a couple of hours, leading to total overflow of people on an already crowded Saturday afternoon where everybody is out for shopping. I had to get to a dinner that time, but had to wait for an hour till the first train would run again. Other collegues of mine where off worse, some of them stuck in train for three hours.
All day long today the earth was shaking now and then because of several aftershocks. Even now while I am writing these lines the room was moving.
I don’t like that at all. It feels like God is angry with you, grabs your house and tries to shake you out of it. Mother Earth is rattling away. More over, with a city as big as Tokyo (12 mio. people), it is amazing how vulnerable the peace of daily life is. I hope we won’t have another one for a while now!
Shakin‘ Greetz, Chris
P.S. Some pics here.
