Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake... and more earthquakes

There was some serious earthquake activity here tonight. Luckily they were about 200km away from Tokyo so there was only shaking here, and no damage.

It was pretty freaky. I was sitting having dinner with Cal and suddenly it was earthquake, earthquake, earthquake... and then another earthquake. Four in rapid succession! The first (M6.9) hit at 5:56 pm, the next (M6.1) at 6:03, then 6:11 (M5.9) and 6:34 (M6.1). To give you an idea of how strong these are, the quake that leveled Bam, Iran was M6.3, and the one that killed all those people in Morocco early this year was M6.4. (M=magnitude). Now it is quite normal to have one earthquake of this magnitude in Japan. That happens all the time. But four in a row!?

And then, there were more - 7:36 (M5.5) and 7:45 (M5.8). I didn't feel those ones but see there are posted on the Earthquake Hazards Program website. So that is six quakes that show on that site so far... it is a few hours behind. Oh, and just before I started writing this, there was another one (M5.5), which makes 7 quakes in the last 6 hours - three of which have been more than M6.

I didn't like these quakes because they were the circling kind. Up and down or side to side is ok, but when it is circular it is a very bad feeling. I'm really sensitive to them (Cal didn't even know there were quakes until I mentioned them) and these ones made me feel quite dizzy.

Anyway, that was the excitement here today. Hopefully there won't be any more. Despite my theory that lots of little quakes release pressure, lots of little quakes all at once are kind of like foreboding. There is quite a lot of damage near the epicenter of the quakes. Near the over 6 (Richter) magnitude quakes, it was a 6 on the Shindo scale. Roads have buckled, mains have burst, lamp posts have fallen over, etc. The quakes were so strong that even one of the shinkansen (bullet trains) derailed. Luckily in Tokyo there were only Shindo 3 or 4 (Link takes you to an explanation of the scale - basically Richter measures energy output and Shindo measures shaking felt at a location).

Hopefully that was the last of them.