Earthquake(s)

On Friday afternoon, March 11th there was a huge earthquake in northern Japan. Thankfully we were very far from the epicentre, but the earthquake felt strong enough to make me want to sit down with Elliott in the Beco.

Grant and I were visiting the front office with Elliott when the earthquake struck. Since there are no shelves in the lofts, the office staff have their wine glasses hanging from a rack over the kitchen. We all ran out of the office onto the street as the glasses started smashing! Elliott was awake in the office, but soon after we ran onto the street he fell asleep in the Beco. My guess is he was soothed by the rocking motion!

After everything had calmed down, we went back up to our loft to see if everything was all right. The water in a pot we had left on the stove had splashed out, which makes sense because the earthquake felt like the ground was shaking up and down, not side to side. Some of our things had fallen off a stool and off the bathroom sink:





But nothing was broken so we were really lucky. As we were looking around our apartment for damage an equally large aftershock hit. It was eery seeing all our belongings swing back and forth from the ceiling! I wonder if Arakawa + Gins had considered earthquakes when they designed the lofts. From experience, it seems quite silly to have things hanging from the ceiling in an earthquake-prone country... We used to have our clothes hanging from bars in the square room, but I asked Grant to move them to a wire in the bathroom instead. It was too scary having our clothes rock back and forth over my head as I lay awake during aftershocks!!

Grant recently interviewed the architect who helped design the lofts, and he said that the lofts are made of such dense concrete that they are really strong against earthquakes. The windows were shaking during the two we were in, so I can't imagine how scary it must have been for people in regular apartments!

After the aftershock subsided Grant and I went across the road to McDonald's to get some late lunch. When we walked in there were only two other customers, which is very unusual for our location. When we went up to order, we were told that the gas had been shut off and we could only order drinks and desserts. We got a coffee each and sat down, and soon after that people started pouring in as usual. They opened the grills and we got our lunch!

We were sitting next to two junior high school kids in McDonald's, and I thought it was interesting that they were watching the news on TV with their cell phone. A sign of the times!



On the way home from McDonald's I noticed there was a LOT more traffic than usual. I didn't know then, but all the trains in Tokyo had been stopped and people had to stay overnight at their offices. I think there was more traffic than usual as people went to pick up their family members from work.



Although trains weren't running, busses were. There was an amazing line-up for the bus outside our loft well into the night. This usually never happens!



We spent a lot of time in front of the TV. I think Elliott picked up on the gravity of the situation, because he was up in the middle of the night for about an hour trying to tell us what he thought about it!



There were lots of aftershocks all of last night and today, and we just felt the earthquake up in Fukushima before I started writing this. Elliott didn't nap from 2pm until 10pm, and had a huge crying spell just before the TV announced the Fukushima earthquake was about to start. (How do they know the earthquake is going to happen before it does, I wonder...?) I wonder if babies are like dogs, they can predict when an earthquake is about to happen :-P

Just so you know we're all safe and sound, here is a photo of our loft right after the big earthquake happened on Friday: