Our first earthquake in Osaka

20130413-100225.jpgInstead of the sound of trains or an announcement van passing by, we were woken this morning at 5.33am to the sound of our whole building shaking – earthquake! It lasted about a minute, and freaked us both out fairly well – I didn’t get back to sleep 🙁

Straight after, I hit twitter and the JMA website to find out more. This quake originated under Awaji island, at a depth of 10km which is considered quite shallow – this is also the same origin point as the 1995 Hanshin earthquake. Luckily, today’s wasn’t remotely as bad as that one.

At the epicentre, this was a 6.0 magnitude quake, and where we live(in that cluster of blue to the right in the picture above) was around 3.0 – which is still more than enough for me.

20130413-100949.jpgTrains were stopped for about 2 hours while safety checks were performed, but even now some five hours later there are still pretty huge delays – not a good day to be travelling! I grabbed a delay certificate just in case I’m late for work.

Many people who’ve lived in Osaka a long time have said this was the first sizeable quake in a long time, so I’m hoping it was a one off!

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2 Comments

  1. Camp
    08/05/2013
    Reply

    Yeah I was sleep there when that happen

    • 09/05/2013
      Reply

      Ah, do you live in Kansai?

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