Earthquake!

Around midnight I was awoken by a very uncomfortable feeling in my chest. As soon as my mind was fully conscious I realized that the whole room was swaying in a rather unnatural manner. My groggy mind finally grasped the fact that this was my first experience of an earthquake. The lights were out in my room and I did not have on my glasses, so I could not see the movement of the objects around me, but I could feel my own movement clearly. Although I have lived in Nagoya, Japan for a year and there have been some very small tremors during that time, I have always been in buildings that have absorbed the shocks when they occurred.

I got up early and went to the bath at the hotel. There I chatted with some old ladies about the earthquake and learned that it had measured 3.2. This is fairly large, but not large enough to cause any major harm (except maybe with freak falling-object accidents). I have to admit, that this was what I had been hoping for my whole time in Japan. I wanted to experience an earthquake first-hand, but did not want to endanger others or myself by hoping for too large or scary a quake. Therefore, this was, to me, a perfect experience.