Friday April 18
00:03
He’s Flying High
My brother is currently on a plane flying from Britain to Japan. I don’t know why, but there’s something weird about the fact that he’s actively doing something at the moment, yet I’m about to go sleep.
But then it has been a weird day. Last night I was shaken awake at 4am by a huge earthquake.
In the ~18months I’ve been in Japan, there’s been about 6 earthquakes that have majorly rocked my apartment or office.
Three of those have been in the last month or two.
That freaks me out. I’ve heard that Tokyo is on the “brink” of a major quake. People here don’t even think about it - just like South Koreans don’t think about the fact that they are still technically at war. But the recent rise in the number of earthquakes has certainly brought the fact to my attention.
I ended up going back to sleep and having a huge nightmare about a catastrophic earthquake hitting Tokyo, with buildings toppling down like dominoes in Shinjuku and surrounds, and me just escaping with my life.
Thankfully I have no “sixth sense” that I’m aware of, so I don’t regard it as any premonition. I just hope I sleep better tonight - in 6 hours time I have to get up and take the Narita Express to the airport to pick up my brother. I’m not looking forward to the 6am rise.
First, can I just ask… when do you have time for sleep? You’re the busiest person I know :-)
Anyway, about Tokyo being on the brink of a big quake… what people mean when they say that is Tokyo has had a major quake on average every 70 years or so. And the last one was more than 70 years ago.
However, I don’t think earthquakes follow a schedule. So talking about “the average time between them” is quite silly. At least I think so anyway. The next big one could be 200 years later. Or, it could be later today :-)
Make sure you take your brother to the parasite museum in Meguro. It’s minutes of fun.
yeah, I’m a little freaked out by the whole earthquake thing too. I didn’t notice that one mercifully.
It’s not helped by the fact my wife just installed a handy little desktop widget that annouces all the earthquake around the world in robotic schoolmatron type voice. It’s particulary scary when we’re watching a DVD and the widget suddenly announces “Earthquake magnitude 6, off the Elutian islands”
The only redeeming feature of the whole earthquake scenario would be that I might be able to take some good photos of the destruction for the blog and the rest of the world.
I’m planning on taking lots of photos of NOW, so that I’ve got some ‘before’ pictures to compare with the ‘after earthquake’ pictures.
I hope you all enjoyed the comedy last Friday and that your brother is enjoying Tokyo.
Sharky - I didn’t know you were still reading my blog :) I gave my brother a choice between the Sword Museum and the Parasite Museum - alas he chose the Sword Museum. Can’t understand why.
Jon - Yes, the comedy was excellent, except for the last guy who I wonder what the heck they were thinking by flying him all the way to Tokyo. I wish he’d gone through Terminal 5 and lost his guitar ;) Thanks for posting the notice about the comedy night on your blog.
Sword schmord :-) Your brother missed out on the photo of the huge elephantitis testicles, and he may never get that opportunity again… unless he simply googles “elephantitis testicles”.