Our First Earthquake

Being from Southern California, earthquakes are nothing new but they are few and far between. But now that we live in Japan where earthquakes happen a lot more frequently, including the most recent one in 2011 that caused the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, you can understand why Bern and I were freaked out on the morning of May 5th last week. Around 5:20am, Bern first woke up thinking it was me accidentally hitting her in my sleep (which is something she's used to...sorry hun!!) but when she realized what it was she then yelled out "earthquake" which totally woke me up because I'm a very heavy sleeper..... Side track for a bit, when I was about 11 years old or so, my family took a trip to Canada with our close family friends the Wongs. I believe we were in Victoria, British Columbia and my buddy Conway and I were sleeping one night when supposedly there was a fire alarm and the hotel guests had to evacuate the building. Luckily it was a false alarm, but we slept through the whole ordeal. To this day I don't know what's more disturbing....that we didn't hear the fire bell go off or that no one bothered to even wake us up??? Geesh! haha Anyhow, back to the story.

Bern and I rushed to the door frame where the quake lasted for about a good 2 minutes. It wasn't a violent shake, it more of a rolling sensation. When it had ended, we of course checked online and discovered it was a 6.2 earthquake centered south of Tokyo. Thank God it wasn't anything serious and no tsunami warnings were reported. Bern and I purchased two emergency kits from the American Red Cross before coming to Japan. I highly suggest that all of our family and friends have something similar and just store it away in the closet. Be prepared because you never know when you're going to need it foreals! Take care everyone!