Ooo! Big Earthquake! I’ve been spending half the year, or sometimes more, in Japan for about 7 years now and in that time I’ve had quite a few earthquakes. To be honest most of them are like “oo, an earthquake” and it’s all quite exciting and passes after a bit. But today’s started out like that and quickly moved into things flying across the room! Which needless to say put it in another category and out of the “wow, isn’t this interesting!” mode.

Things were OK though. Everything was thrown around like something from Arthur C Clarke’s “World of Strange Powers”, I bet that’s where all these poltergeist stories come from, it’s people who’ve been in Earthquakes! And you could see how much the building moved ( I was on the 8th floor), as my desk, which is on wheels, ended up a metre of so from where it should be. So one rule is not to pack things high up, especially putting music gear on top of speakers!

But it’s amazing how Fukuoka has stood up to the shake, although a few roads are cracked and some people were injured, it’s surprising that the city seems to be pretty much unaffected.

Richard Graham

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