Earthquake!

This morning I was lying peacefully asleep in bed when I was jolted awake by Tyler's Japanese cell phone sounding a siren-like alarm and saying something in Japanese. "Earthquake!" Tyler said. And sure enough, it was!

Tyler was more freaked out than I was, since I am pretty used to small earthquakes in Alaska. But since we live in a pretty old tall apartment building, we both got up and started getting dressed just in case we needed to evacuate. Within a few minutes the light shaking of the quake was over. Nothing was broken or had fallen over, except Tyler's precariously perched Wolfman action figure (featured in an earlier blog post). 

The earthquake was a ways south of where we are, and while it was about a 6.6 or so, it looks like there was no major damage or casualties or a tsunami warning issued there. But it was eerily close to part of Japan hit by the tsunami four years ago. And with the recent Nepal disaster, it's important to be earthquake aware! 

So for Tyler and I it was (luckily) just a little bit of excitement for the day. There was one other small earthquake the first night I got here. Those nice little earthquakes always kind of remind me of home.