One of the facts of life for living in Japan is the chance of earthquakes. This part of the country doesn’t get as many as some other areas (although it did have one of the worst in recent history earlier this year). Japanese phones automatically get warnings sent to them, but because my phone is not Japanese I have an app for the purpose, configured to warn above a certain magnitude and within a certain radius.
A few minutes ago my officemate came over and asked “did you feel that? I think there was a small earthquake”. I checked the app’s log, and sure enough the seismometer network reported a “Level 3” event, Magnitude 4.2, beneath the slopes of a volcano about 60 miles away.
My first potentially-noticable earthquake, and I missed it! I feel faintly disappointed; while I certainly hope that a major quake is a part of Japanese life that I do not get to experience, I’d quite like to feel a minor, non-dangerous one.
It does, perhaps, vindicate my change of weekend plans – I had hoped to go and visit that very volcano, but for the last few weeks the area within 1km of the active crater has been closed for safety reasons…