# Strong quake hits northern Japan

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-09-26T05:22:07Z


BBCStrong quake hits northern Japan 

A strong earthquake has struck the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, according to reports. 

The quake, which hit at about 0450 local time on Friday (1940GMT Thursday), was also felt in central Hidaka and eastern Tokatsu, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, according to Kyodo news agency..I was blogging when this happened. The glass rattled a bit, but I guess we were pretty far away from the epicenter. I went up stairs just in case to wake up Mizuka.

Tokyo is widely acknowledged to be overdue for another "big one" soon. Recently an astronomer reported that a quake of magnitude 7 was going to hit Tokyo soon. The last big quake in the Kanto region was in 1923 and killed more than 120,000 people. This was also the quake where the Japanese army spread rumors that the Koreans had poisoned the wells and hundreds of Koreans were lynched. (I've visited their graves.)

I definitely don't want to be in Tokyo for the next big one and I'm glad I'm moving to Chiba where there are fewer earthquakes and will be living in a house surrounded by bamboo forests which make ground splits quite difficult.

The other interesting thing to note is that Jason D's comment on my blog was what got me to get my face out of my blogging and realize that it was actually a bigger earthquake up north and not a small one here. It's funny that someone in LA is feeding me news about Japan on my blog. ;-)





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