Lessons from experiencing an
As an English teacher in a Japanese high school I have been living in Japan for the last four and a half years - and I have become used to earthquakes. Occasionally I can feel the earth shaking ever so slightly and I just ignore it. This happens almost every month! Japanese school students are taught from a young age how to deal with earthquakes:
“Go under your desk and squat, hold the table legs, and don’t panic.” The country is well prepared for earthquakes; modern buildings are being built to withstand tremors and people are being educated about how to prepare an emergency pack and where to go if an earthquake occurs. Emergency shelters are located in school gyms and sporting arenas.
Japan even has a little notifi- cation that goes off on everyone’s phone warning of an earthquake, with advice on what to do.
So earthquakes shouldn’t be a problem, right? Wrong.
Knowing on paper what you should do and actually having to do it are so, so different…
On Monday 18th June at 7.58 am in Takatsuki in the Osaka Prefecture, an earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale with a hypocentre of 13 kilometres occurred. The hypocentre is where the earthquake originates deep within the earth, while the place where it occurs on the earth’s surface is called the epicentre.
When the earthquake struck, I was getting ready for work. I rang my mother in the morning, sent a quick message to my friend, and was about to leave the house, when, at 7.58 am, my apartment shook so violently that I thought I was going to die. Despite living in the Hyogo Prefecture (which is next to the Osaka Prefecture), I felt these earth- shaking tremors which lasted for about 30 seconds.
For some strange reason I was rational enough to squat on the floor and cover my head with my arms. My glass cabinet containing my crockery flew open of its own accord and showered me with glass, cutting my hand and causing me to bleed. The cup of tea sitting on the table above me fell to the ground, splashing tea all over the rug. Bottles, containers, and papers fell from my desk.
My apartment complex is quite old, and has not been fortified for earthquakes. When would the shaking stop? I couldn’t hold onto anything and as things were falling around me I was trying hard to protect my head...I cried from the shock, and I cried even harder later that day when I heard a nine-yearold girl had died due to a wall falling onto her.
Over 200 people were injured, and 5 deaths occurred from people being crushed by falling objects. Problems associated with earthquakes included aftershocks, fires, landslides, burst water pipes, service disruptions (trains, buses, and closure of express-