Disaster season

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at Starbucks with my housemate Rinko and her friend Yuki. When I took the picture we were just cracking some jokes about the gift Yuki had brought for Rinko, a diary with Rinko`s favourite Korean singer. It`s considered a bit "middle-aged Lady" to be infatuated with neighbour country`s cutie boys, called "Hanryu Stars".
A couple of minutes after I stoped laughing and got rather sick in my stomach. An earthquake... There had been one or two very light earthquakes since I came here, but this one was a much stronger one. Not just a little tremor, but rather heavy shaking as I had experienced only in the earthquake simulator in Fukuoka last year (http://clod-lost-in-translation.blogspot.com/2008/07/preventing-disasters.html). My friends laughed about it, but I thought it was not that funny especially considering that a major earthquake is long overdue in the Kanto area, the last one was the huge disaster of 1923 which left over 100`000 dead. Statistics say about every 70 years an earthquake of that magnitude happens, so make your calculations...
I learned on the internet later that yesterday`s earthquake had had a magnitude of 6.9, some sources say 7.1 and had its center near the Izu islands, where I just spent a weekend lately. A magnitude of around 7 seems very strong indeed, the Kobe earthquake in 1995 had a magnitude of 7.2 obviously. The epicenter may have been a bit further away this time, but that was definitely serious. But except for a few people getting injured by objects falling down there was no damage.
It`s also typhoon season in Japan and tomorrow the large typhoon that was sweeping over Taiwan on Friday is passing near Tokyo, so some heavy rain is expected. The South of Japan however is much more affected and the typhoons occur every year in late summer. This is definitely a country with a lot of natural action, be it earthquakes, typhoons or volcanos. Not quite used to that yet.