Earthquakes 地震

I am not fond of earthquakes. Here we sit, relaxing after dinner on a Sunday night, and we have a tremor, somewhere in the 3-4 range on the Shindo scale. Ugh. What a strange feeling, the floor below you shaking, the overhead lamp swinging, the doors rattling. Japan uses the Shindo Scale, also known as the JMA Seismic Intensity Scale, to measure what an earthquake feels like at any given location. So, while this was a 6.9 magnitude earthquake at its epicenter out in the ocean, it only felt like a 3 or 4 in the Yokohama-Tokyo area, and had less intensity elsewhere in the country. Immediately afterwards the Japanese Meteorological Agency provides their collected earthquake information on television and the internet. Because I am facinated by and terrified of earthquakes (particularly the predicted Tokai Earthquake), I frequently check the daily earthquake information on the JMA website. For a map showing the seismic intensity of tonight's earthquake click here.