Hokkaido Earthquake

There was an earthquake here last night, followed by several others in northeast Japan.  We felt shaking twice – when we were eating dinner, then again a few hours later. It was mild - nothing fell off shelves or anything like that.  Not having a television, we couldn’t check to see the news when it happened. I did check the internet news later and have received several email messages from friends in the US.

The news reports I’ve read said there were a series of quakes last night with the strongest being a magnitude 6.8 or 6.9 that was centered off the coast of Hokkaido. Several other earthquakes followed the first.  One was a magnitude 6.1, centered off the coast east of Tokyo, causing Narita airport and the bullet trains to shut down temporarily. Some coastal towns on Hokkaido were evacuated, but so far it appears there are no injuries or damages.

One report said last night’s quakes were aftershocks from the massive earthquake that hit Japan a year ago. While we were on our trip we had talked with our friends about last year’s earthquake.  They told us where they were and about trying to call their families.  Ted and I talked about putting together some things we would need if there was a disaster, but there hadn’t been an urgency to doing it. We’ll be talking more and doing something about it today.