1015 Earthquakes (since 11th of March)

Today I like to address a topic, which many of you asked me before: how safe do you feel in Tokyo? I would like to address the issues with the earthquakes today and tomorrow I will talk more about the radiation fear.

To start with: You will never be safe when we talk about earthquakes in Japan, but this is what you accept when you live here.

I believe that there is no other country which is so well prepared as Japan and all the buildings seem to be very stable and well designed for quakes. Of course, we are always scared when we feel an earthquake, but I think this is normal as you never know if it will get stronger and how long your building is shaking now. Just imagine you sit in a boat with no windows and someone tells you it will be rough sea. Everything is swaying and you never know how long more and if the next wave gets higher. This is a bit how we feel. Well, the only difference is that a building is usually stable and you do not expect to be on a boat from one to the other minute.

A colleague of mine told me yesterday that there is a prediction for a 9.4 magnitude quake directly in or very nearby Tokyo. Of course then there will be a lot of damage, injuries & death, but as I mentioned, you need to accept this risk when you start living in Japan and therefore nobody will run away because of a prediction, which is anyhow speculated for many years already.

At the moment the amount and strength of earthquakes are decreasing and I hope that this will continue to decrease. Not necessarily for me, but especially for the people in the North of Japan who suffered enough.

Here is a link about the 1015 earthquakes which happened since the 11th of March:

http://www.japanquakemap.com/

What is quite scary for me, is the fact that almost all earthquakes hit in the same/similar area and this is also causing the drowsiness of the people in that area. I read today that some people imagine that there are quake 24/7 now, just because the earth did shake so often.

So let's hope and pray for these people that we will be able to look into a brighter and more peaceful future for this region and Japan.