Finally, after more than 2 months in this earthquake country, I finally managed to feel one earthquake. It was a small one, just a couple of seconds, enough to realize everything is moving (laterally), then everybody makes a couple of comments (“It was pretty big”, “Not really”, “First earthquake, then?”) and back to work.
The Japan Meteorological Agency has a complete website with weather and typhoon forecast, earthquake information, etc. So, after feeling one, you can check how big it was, where the epicentre was, etc. The one I felt is this one.
My office is very near from one of the “3” spots. So, I felt an earthquake of magnitude 3, according to the japanese seismic intensity scale, which use the shindo as a unit.
The Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale is a measure used in Japan and Taiwan to indicate the strength of earthquakes. It is measured in units of shindo (震度, shindo? seismic intensity, literally “degree of shaking”). Unlike the Richter magnitude scale (which measures the total magnitude of the earthquake, and represents the size of the earthquake with a single number) the JMA scale describes the degree of shaking at a point on the Earth’s surface. As a result, the measure of the earthquake varies from place to place, and a given quake may be described as “shindo 4 in Tokyo, shindo 3 in Yokohama, shindo 2 in Shizuoka”.
From Wikipedia.
Looking forward to feeling the next one… A bit more is ok, as long as it is not the Big One everybody is expecting here… Even the JMA.
In sumo, apart from fighting there are lots of symbolic gestures that come from ancestral times. This is in what they spend most of the time, and not fighting at all. The funny thing is that each gesture is done going back from the initial position in the center of the “ring” to the respective corner… Some of these things are done “by default”, but some other times, they go back to the corner by their own initiative, in what japanese explain as “mind game”.
One of these gestures is taking grab some salt with the hand…
They also drink the liquid… whatever it is…
And of course, they show how athletic and flexible they are.
Quite interesting spectacle, but quite slow for my taste…
People love it, though. Although, the situation of sumo in Japan, is quite similar to the Bull Fighting in Spain. Yes, it is a popular event, but not many people like it. Specially, not many young people, which is what happens here.
They also have sponsors which suddenly show their names on the ring… and people scream excited because of that! (I don’t get yet where the excitement for this comes from).
But, of course, there are some people who cannot be full-time focused in the sume and also keep track of what is happening in other fields… Like this one, following the horse races in his mobile phone, while the sumo guys do the show pre-combat.
As you all know, sumo is a traditional japanese sport. It basically consists in two extremely “big” guys wrestling. It was really impressive to see so many people watching this (a full big arena) with a lot of media coverage around the sumo players, which are very high located in the hierarchical japanese society.
I am not going to bore you talking about politics… Specially because I do not have a clue about this in Japan. But anyway, thanks to some friends’ contacts, we could visit the parliament of Japan. The Diet is a huge building near the Imperial Palace, holding both the parliament and the senate, which seems (once more in Japan) very practical, isn’t it?
Next to the parliament (again, very good idea), we could see the Prime Minister’s Residence. There was a lot of movement those days, as he had resigned, and the new one was about to be elected.
