Aye Carumba!

[Baak]

Stumbled on this amidst the chaos on the PlayMyth.net forums - some amazing photographs in this gallery:
Helicopter Pilot's photo gallery


This one really struck me as totally insane - no matter how nice a house this might be, in earthquake country this is completely nuts. At any given moment the entire thing could come crashing down - way down!

Alas, I can't post the link to that photo separately - just search for block the sun on the above gallery and click the photo so see it in detail. It's well worth it imo.

[Jungle Pickle]

I experienced my first earthquakes in Japan.

Me and my friend were in the Waseda University library when suddenly everything started shaking; I looked into the lobby and could see the pillars themselves jostling. I believed it to be a very close train that was causing all the rumbling (when you live in Tokyo, you get used to trains in the same way people in Kansas get used to flat expanses of nothing). However, I realized a second later that there were no above-ground trains anywhere near here... By then it had stopped, though.

The other significant earthquake experience I had was sitting in the dining room with my host family. Hokkaido had just experienced a fair earthquake and it didn't take five minutes for the news to report it, with footage of the shaking and a projection of the magnitude when it reached various parts of Japan. By the time we felt it where we lived - less than ten minutes later - we already knew it had happened, what it looked like at the source and how big it would be when it reached us.

Japan is expected to have something like "The Big One" within the next 25 years. At the rate they're going... I think they might just be ready for it when it happens.