Job Discussion Forums

[Shonai Ben]

Anyone feel the earthquakes in Tohoku?One major quake at 12:15 am last night and again this morning at 7:15 am.
Parts of northern Miyagi-ken sustained a fair amount of damage,but here in Sendai it was minor damage.
So far!!

[locagrl814]

it's in the news. 200+ people were injured. i feel bad for them

[azarashi sushi]

No damage.... but it woke me up here in Tokyo!

[locagrl814]

i think in the northern part of japan, there was a mudslide.

[C76]

You guys have tapped into my biggest fear about working in Japan.

Are certain regions/cities more likely to have earthquakes than others?

[Celeste]

C76- I am not sure which areas have the highest number of earthquakes, but here on Kyushu, they are a more rare occurence. I was in Okinawa when I saw the news about Miyagi-ken. It looked pretty bad.

[rockwolf]

Kyoto is especially prone to earthquakes, it's sitting on the convergence of something like 4 different faultlines.

I lived there for only a couple of months during a vacation, and experienced 3 very minor quakes.

Coming from Minnesota, where there is a quake once every 100 years, I found it pretty exciting.


Japan is extremely earthquake prone, however, most quakes will do little more than tremble and be done at that. There are some that are bad, like the ones just recently, and some that are devastating, like the one
that smashed Kobe. But overall, they're not too scary.

A lot of Japans major cities have huge buildings that would be devastated by quakes. Thankfully, Japanese architecture takes this into consideration, and many large buildings nowadays have earthquake countermeasures to resist the buck and sway of the angry earth.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, there's scarier things in Japan to worry about, like Natto.

[TokyoLiz]

Oh yeah, I felt the second quake we had the other morning. First one woke me up but i was dozy, and the second one rattled the fusuma quite nicely, but nothing fell off my walls.

You get used to it. Little rattles just become everyday occurances like rain or wind.

The icky quake that really bugged me was that big one in May that hit at dinner time. Although it wasn't really strong, it lasted a long time. I actually felt queasy from that one.

[Shonai Ben]

The quake in May was by far the most powerful and longest quake that I have experienced in Japan.
I stood in a doorway and literally hung on until it was over.I thought about running out of my house but decided to stay where I was.
Only one thing was broken in my house and a few things moved,but overall no damage.
Most quakes in Japan are not that severe,just a little shaking and they are over.
It is something everyone has to get used to when they come here.

[As Das Fads]

Apparently Ibaraki is unlikely to get a big one, as no major faults cross the prefecture. Hence the number of nuclear reactors here...and three-eyed fish called blinky.

[Shonai Ben]

Isn't "Blinky" the mayor of Tokyo??