All Shook Up

My whole life growing up in Texas and going to school in Oklahoma, earthquakes were nothing but something that happened in far away lands. Now however, living in the land of the rising sun, the typhoon, and the earthquake, things are much different. Earthquakes don't happen everyday, but they are not uncommon. If you're walking down the street you might not even notice one is happening. They are most noticable when you're 1) still or 2) above ground level like on the second or higher story of a building. What's an earthquake like, you might be wondering? Well, imagine the ground shaking. There you go.
Last night as I was drifting off to sleep one hit that was noticably bigger than usual. It lasted at least a full minute, and was shaking things around pretty well in the middle of it. When things started getting rough I was like, "well maybe I should go stand in a doorway or something," but then it mellowed and ended. Several people today mentioned it and how they, too, thought it was stronger and longer than usual.
Then tonight I was downstairs at Ian's and suddenly the whole buiding shook rather strongly for about 30 seconds... no warm up to the strong jolts or anything. That frightened us both quite a bit. I made an offhand joke at it leading up to "the big one" but soon learned that "the big one" is not something to joke about... apparently Tokyo is overdue for their big earthquake that hits about every 90 years. Oh my. Living in Japan is always exciting.
So there you go folks. We've got earthquakes, and we're set to have a typhoon hit us pretty hard this weekend. Can't get much more adventuresome than this. :)