My first earthquake!

I missed 3 in my town since I arrived. The first 2 were missed cos I was away from my town. The third I slept through, cos apparently it was a gentle tremor that was centred near Tokyo.

But I did not miss the one which struck early this morning about 1am. I was not sleeping yet cos I was preparing something for my lesson at my visit school on Monday when I felt the ground rock gently. I was wondering if it was a very gentle earthquake or a sign that I was tired and should go to bed...then JOLT! Everything jolted for like a good 2 seconds. Then it went back to rocking (but stronger than it was initially) for another 5 secs or so. There was a lot of noise cos of all the doors, windows and furniture rattling. It wasn't like super strong but strong enough to leave no doubt that it was an earthquake.

I was quite scared. My heart was pounding really hard even after the shaking stopped cos I didn't know if there'd be any aftershocks. I felt a certain kind of helplessness cos I didn't know what would happen but there's nothing I could do about it so I just had to wait to see. And the jolting lasted long enough for me to be thinking while it was taking place. It wasn't like "huh, oh that was an earthquake"...it was like "oh this is an earthquake...still shaking leh...er, will the ceiling fall on me? Should I leave the house, but still shaking how to walk?"

A teacher at school told me that the earthquake was measured about 3 on the Japanese earthquake scale, which has a maximum scale reading of 8. The centre of the quake was about 40 mins away from our town.

OK, I'm done with hoping to experience earthquakes already...now I hope I won't have to experience another one again!