A moderately strong quake hit southwestern Japan at about 5:00 on Monday morning (3:00 Sunday afternoon CST). Although Okayama isn’t anywhere near the epicenter, it was close enough to catch some of the tremors.
Sometime on Monday morning (I was sound asleep after having been out all day Sunday and not getting back home until 2:00 in the morning) I was awoken by the shaking of the Sedlacek’s house, where I have been spending the nights for the past couple of weeks. The tremors most resembled the shaking you would experience from a very low-flying plane, except a bit more intense. The entire thing lasted for a few seconds as far as I can remember, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Later on Monday I got an e-mail from my penpal in Oita prefecture, which is in southwestern Japan on the island of Kyushu. She said that there had been an earthquake this morning, and sure enough, NHK was reporting that a magnitude 6.2 quake had hit Oita prefecture at 5:01 today. Earthquakes are fairly common in Oita, much more so than in Okayama, but strong quakes are still rare. On the Japanese scale of earthquake intensity, which goes from 0 to 7, Oita and surronding areas were put at 5, while Okayama’s measured intensity was placed at 4.
So although it wasn’t very serious, I can at least check off “experience an earthquake” from my mental list of things to do in Japan.