rattled

[xparrot]

I grew up in New England. I'm used to huddling inside during smothering blizzards and beautiful, dangerous ice storms that bring down powerlines for days, and weathering the occasional mild hurricane.

What I'm not used to is the ground under my feet deciding it doesn't want to be there anymore. One of the hardest things for me to get used to about life in Japan is the earthquakes. I haven't even been through any major ones, just a few tremors. This morning was one of the longest, and it was maybe 30 seconds (probably less), and it registered as a negligible 1 on the Japanese scale--didn't so much as knock down the manga precariously stacked on the top of the bookshelf next to my futon. (...I'm aware I live in quake country. I never claimed to be intelligent about it.)

Still, there's something about jerking out of half-sleep at ten of 7 AM with the floor rumbling under you like a monster truck rally is parading by--except our concrete apartment building doesn't quiver with any traffic--and when it's over the fusuma sliding doors are rattling in their frames for a minute afterward, just so you're assured that you didn't imagine it. It's the helplessness that gets me--a blizzard you can hide inside and stock up wood for the stove; a flood you can find higher ground; even a tornado you can flee to the basement. An earthquake is everywhere, all you see, anywhere you go; there's nowhere to go, nothing to do but wait. Lie on your futon staring up at the ceiling and hope it stops before it gets worse. And like all the most frightening disasters, if it's going to wreak havoc, it'll be over almost before you realize it's happening, too sudden and swift to do a damn thing about.

Yeah, I'm just not going to get used to that.

Comments

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

At least ice storms are beautiful...hee, though, there's something very ironic about you being worried about ice! (Is Alaska too cold for ice storms, then?) Though the random trees falling over on your house are just as likely as earthquakes...really, any time the world itself is attacking, it's scary in how it reminds us just how powerless we actually are.

[sholio]

Hee, you've got a point about the irony, though I hadn't even thought about that! It's not so much the ice storm *itself* that worries me (though it's true that we rarely get them; it's just too cold and dry) as the power outages, though. I'm used to being relatively self-sufficient, with enough food and water, and the ability to heat the house without power. The idea of being trapped in my sister's mobile home trailer during an extended power outage in cold weather kinda freaks me out.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if you're not equipped for a power-out, they can be big trouble - we used to live in the downtown of our little town, so rarely lost power for more than 24 hours, but the ice storms back when I was in college took out some places' electricity for more than a week. Ithaca didn't get them as bad as New England, though, at least when I was there...