Earthquake City

I just realized that I've felt three earthquakes in the seven days since we arrived here.  The most recent one was just an hour or so ago, and our 14th floor apartment swayed for at least 10 seconds.  The glasses and plates in the kitchen cupboard rattled and we all grabbed our chairs. Coming from California, the idea of earthquakes is not foreign to us, but Tokyo seems to be a whole new level of earthquake activity.  Just think, in 1923 there was the Great Kanto earthquake that killed 140,000 people in this region.  And the 1995 earthquake in Kyoto killed 6,400 people.

There are some very strict earthquake engineering standards for buildings in Japan, which is reassuring.  But then there's the case of the architect who falsified earthquake protection reports for something like 20 high rise residential buildings in various Japanese cities.  Certainly, living in an old wooden house in this city would not be advisable.

When I considered all the earthquake factors and our lifestyle, I decided that we could live in an older building as long as it has been inspected and retrofitted as necessary.  But I was insistent that we not live higher than the fifth floor -- we ended up with an apartment on the fourth floor for our permanent apartment.  Yeah, I'll miss the city views we get from our temporary digs, but overall I'd like to be closer to the ground.