Woke up today to some more rain, sleet, snail, slush. The kids are all suffering a cold to varying degrees. Skyler earned the right to see a doctor when he was coughing up gunk, but the doctor says his chest is clear and sent him home with cold medicine. I having been trying to stave off colds be giving the kids chances to get extra rest and well hydrated. They have been getting the hot yuzu and hot ginger honey treatment. Hopefully nothing amounts to more than a simple cold. I have been having a headache today, as well, but I am pretty sure it stems from the feeling that my neck is strained. Between the weather being so nasty and wanting to make sure I don't get stranded in another city for the night, the coldish kids, and my neck strain related headache, I decided to skip orchestra rehearsal tonight.
While I was making dinner, I let the kids watch NHK (the play educational kids' programs while I make dinner). I heard Tomo carrying on about something, and he sounded genuinely worried, so I went into the living room to see what the problem was. The early earthquake warning system came on the TV. I saw that there was a quake on the other side of the island. I told him that it was too far away and that we probably wouldn't feel it. Right on cue.... we started shaking. I knew it was pretty far away, so I wasn't overly concerned at least not for us. I was in the middle of popping popcorn for a movie tonight when the quake struck. I went back to the kitchen and continued keeping an eye on the popcorn. We pop our popcorn in a big kettle on our stove.
But we kept shaking. We shook for quite a bit, but the general feeling of those in the house was that it was not anything we needed to worry about. Of course, Corey and I know that if it feels pretty decent sized where we are that it has to be pretty big at the epicenter. This one turned out to be a 7.3 on the Richter scale and quite a ways out in the ocean. It did hit in the same general area at the March 11, 2011 quake. Although, it is still a far cry from the magnitude 9 from that fateful day, it was still enough to raise concerns about tsunamis along the coast. People evacuated to safety. I think the largest tsunami measurement measured in at 1m (about 3 feet) tonight. I do not know of any damage or personal injuries as of yet. I have heard that there were maybe some fires started due to the quake, but I have not heard of any confirmed news on this yet. There are also reports that nothing new has cropped up the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor plants. That is good. The earthquake was felt as a shindo 5 over in some areas of Tohoku. We felt it as a shindo 3 in our area. We have a mountain range between here and there that helped to buffer some of the shaking here. Shindo doesn't measure the magnitude of the quake at the epicenter, but rather the intensity of shaking it causes in other places away from the epicenter.
Do pray for the people of Tohoku. I have friends there and the general consensus there is that people are fearful and worried They people there have been through so much in the past, nearly, two years.
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