Two Earthquakes, No Problems

[a_cubed]

A Magnitude 4.7 quake off the coast of Honshu at 10:40am. This is the first time I’ve been in an earthquake (that I could feel) in my office. That wasn’t much of a shake here in Tokyo, though. A larger one (larger at my location) hit at 12:20pm, now showing on the earthquake monitors as around magnitude 5.7(USGS)-5.9(EMSC/GFZ). Anyway, no problems for me, though as this is off the coast up towards Senda, I suspect people up there are feeling more nervous again. The Japanese Met Agency haven’t issued a tsunami warning, which is good.

Things had quietened down in November and December from the afterschocks of last year’s big one in March. I wonder when a region like Japan is regarded as stopping having aftershocks and is back into normal mode where a new earthquake is regarded as its own event.

Comments

[galtine1.livejournal.com]

re: aftershocks vs. new events

I know here in California, they then to stop calling them aftershocks when the frequency dwindles. USGS.gov has this on their FAQ: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=1&faqID=99

No idea how that may ease anyone who is quake-phobic, but I've gotten so jaded about them I have a false sense of security.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

If I'd been quake-phobic I'd have been one of the 50% of Western residents in Japan who left after March 2010 and probably one of the two thirds of those who didn't return. Actually, that's probably unfair. Most of them seem to have been nucklear power-phobic (what's the right word for that?) as it was Fukushima rather than the earthquake/tsunami that scared most of them off according to both my own anecdotal discussions and news reporting.
I've not quite gotten blase or jaded about them yet. My first earthquake was in the UK when I woke up one Sunday morning with the bed shaking back and forth wondering what on earth I'd been dreaming about to make me shake the bed :-). Then I experienced a small one on a visit to California in 1996. Since coming to Japan, of course, I've lived through a pretty big one as well as multiple smaller ones. The big one last year was a wake-up call to sort the apartment out (we only moved in in February 2010 so some things were on the list o jobs but hadn't been done, others got put on the list of jobs. We still haven't done them all, though. In particular I need to sort out the front of bookshelf holders I've been looking at. Slot-on strips just to keep the books on the shelves, A couple of the shelves also need fixing to the wall more securely.

[galtine1.livejournal.com]

I understand that need to "fix things" -- I have two tall dresser/book cases that really should be strapped to the wall, and pictures need to be hung with double mounts so that they don't slide as much (keeps them hanging straight as well).

Weeding out is hard. And that's my Mom's next task. I think spending time with her mom (age 93) has made her realize she has too much stuff. Getting rid of it is safer/saner than a lot of other options. Especially looking at the shelving for her crafting supplies: floor to ceiling and not strapped to the walls either. Dad's usually better than that, but these were to have been temporary shelves back in 2000.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Ah, there's nothing like moving a third of of the way around the planet, to a country with much smaller housing, to encourage one to really sift one's belongings. While there've been a few things I've missed since moving here that I got rid of, mostly it's things I couldn't store or use easily here, or couldn't bring anyway like my power tools (different electricity supply system so even if I had space here which I don't then the ones I had in the UK would have needed a power converter and so it would have been better to buy new ones anyway). I got rid of a third of my books, a third of my DVDs and most of the DVDs/CDs went into storage cases while the individual cases got tossed. I've missed one or two books/series I had, but that's not bad for culling about 600.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

There was a M7.3 earthquake offshore near Indonesia a few days back and I sort-of expected there would be some other sizeable ones around the Ring of Fire to follow. It may just be observer effect though, like shark attacks -- you notice them more after the first one of the season has been reported widely in the press.

From looking at Google Maps the M5.7 earthquake you mentioned was about 40km SW of the Fukushima NPPs.