Earthquake

A lot's happened since I last posted, but I feel I should post the most important thing first and come back to everything else when it's not 4am.

Japan was hit by an 8.9M earthquake today, March 11th, 2011, off the coast of Sendai. There was a 13 foot tsunami that hit the northern side of Japan, which later also hit Hawaii but with much less force. Sendai is north east of where I live and, luckily, I was south enough where it was strong enough to shake the building, but didn't topple anything over. I came home to find a bag of bottle caps had fallen down and that's it.

There were fires up north in Chiba, which is next to Tokyo. There were also some fires in Sendai. Last I checked the death toll was at 40 people and rising because Japan has many underground parking lots and subways... and sadly not everyone got out of them alive.

I bet you're wondering what I'm still doing up at 4 in the morning. I stayed up until 10pm Japan time, 3am Hawaii time to keep an eye on the tsunami. It wasn't very strong and I fell asleep at my kotatsu waiting for more updates. I woke up around 1am to find that the tides in Hawaii were simply higher than normal and everyone seemed alright. Considering Grandma and Auntie Fay live on a mountain I figured they'd be fine either way. Still, having everyone running out to fill up their gas tanks and pumping the gas stations dry was disconcerting.

And for some reason I just haven't gotten back to sleep. I know once I lay down I'll crash, but for some reason I feel kind of restless. We had another little tremor just a little while ago. Larger than most of the itty bitty ones in the sense that I heard my windows rattle a bit and also still feel my apartment building, new as it is, still swaying a bit. I think I know what lying on one of those vibrating beds they have at motels feels like now. hahaha.

Anyway, considering it's so late I'm going to curl up in bed. Stay safe everyone!