tonari no shibafu

Whoa

Just had very big, very long earthquake.

Something else to add to my earthquake bag

Portable solar power cells....sweet.

via Gizmodo

Disaster preparedness

Libby sent me a link to Ready Freddy, which is a site that sells a ready-made disaster kit in a backpack.  While some of the items are easily obtained for anyone with a little bit of  time and a store nearby some of the items like the ones in the Light-Power-Communications bag are pretty cool.  They have  hand-crank cellphone chargers and lanterns.  The $150 price tag is pretty steep, but it turns out that you can buy some of the items separately.

地震、怖いですね。

Yesterday evening we had another relatively strong earthquake. It was centered in Chiba prefecture, across the harbor from Tokyo. In the map below, the purple triangles represent low intensity (magnitude 1) earthquakes and the bluish ones are magnitude 2. Yesterday's was a 4.8.

From Japanese Yahoo.

Earthquake!

Ok, so the one good thing about living in a wooden construction, old school apt. building is that you feel the earthquakes like the one that just happened, early. Basically, if it feels like someone has a power buffer on oak flooring below you, an earthquake is about to hit. Sitting on the tatami you really get the early warning system. I was on my feet and on the way to the kitchen before it really started to shake. I enjoy the false sense of security which allows me to forget how overdue Tokyo is for a big one.