Typhoon & Earthquake

First two weeks in Japan and already both typhoon (not directly though) and earthquake have happened.

Last week, typhoon number 18 went past Japan. They count typhoons here with numbers instead of giving names for them since they come every year. So this typhoon was the 18th of this year.

The typhoon didn't directly hit Tokyo as it went through central Japan, but it rained almost for the whole week. I wore slippers for the whole time as I ruined one pair of (cheap) shoes on Sun 6th when it rained a lot. Or to be honest the shoes got soaked and let of color resulting my feet being black even after a wash.

Going to school on a rainy day. Shibuya station.

Where the typhoon went. 日 means day, weekday is in the brackets, 時 means time.

The cheap Japanese umbrellas are really nice. :D And actually our teacher said today in the class that the umbrellas are apparently becoming a popular souvenir from Japan. She didn't understood why, but I told that in my opinion they are: cheap (~500yen from konbini), useful (you can see through, so even strong wind wouldn't be a problem), somewhat strong (more than you would expect from a cheap one. I want to take one home to Finland as well haha. :D

Then on 13th Saturday morning 5:49 am, the first earthquake came. The epicenter was at the Tokyo Bay and the intensity was 5.3. At our place it was either 4 or 5 in intensity based on the map (it doesn't have any names on it so I'm not sure which measurement point is closest to our place).

At first I didn't even understand what's going on, I was too sleepy. I though my neighbor is washing laundry (and that it's on the fast spinning mode "sling?", "linkous" in Finnish) in the next room and I was like "what the hell, why do you do it in the middle of the night". Then I realized that a) we don't have washing machines in the rooms, b) the walls are moving. But I didn't even bother getting out of the bed as I just looked up and declared that ok, nothing's going to fall on me and just continued sleeping. I can't remember it clearly as I was so sleepy, but the following picture gives some proof that it actually happened.

My laundry money pile was straight in the evening.

We also learned in our first Japanese culture/history/business/etc. lecture about an app (Yurekuru) that warns about the earthquakes about 10 or 15 seconds before it happens. My Samsung S2 has too old Android so I can't download it. More more reason to get a new phone. Many of the Vulcanus people woke up because of the app, I woke on the quake itself... and some people didn't wake at all. They seem to have good skills on sleeping. :D