I feel the earth move under my feet

I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down. Except not really. I did feel the apartment move under my hands and knees and thus also under my feet, but fortunately the sky didn't come tumbling down. That may have been too much excitement for one morning. At least two questions I had previously pondered were answered for me, the first being are earthquakes scarier than typhoons? The answer is a clear cut "yes". Yes. Yes. YES. YES. The second question, "will a tremendous shock cure a hangover?" The answer, unfortunately is "no". Although you don't really worry so much about vomiting when things are falling off tables and shelves around you. I will explain this chain of events later ("what's to explain?" you ask- "the earth shook, you shook", but there is more...)

The week had been a good one. No lessons at school, so it was all very quiet. A couple of nights in, and a Thursday night St-Patrick's-Day birthday celebration for AbSlance. I had spent the day indulging in Choclit as did LeeJay as she drove us to Shingo-cho where MsLance lives, and we troughed till the sun went down and beyond. Phil and ChoLyn came too and we had a Japanese smorgasboard (except we didn't really as no such thing exists. We really just ate lots of types of Japanese food) and as I squeezed copious amounts of mayonaise onto my yaki-udon noodles, I realised that a surplus of fat in my diet may be causing the surplus of fat on me. Oops.

Thursday night was a long one as I did not sleep. At all. Whenever I stood up I felt exhausted. Whenever I lay down I felt agitated. Whenever I did a gymnastics/ yoga style bridge, I felt the floor. "What fun!" I didn't think. But I did think, "I can't go to school today" as it was Friday by this point. And so I didn't. And I slept from 9am to 3:50 pm (strangely, 12am to 6:50am UK time. Hmm.) And in the evening LeeJay and AbSlance and I went to RayVon's for a night in.

Saturday was a big travelling day, as I met up with 3 other ALTs from my area, Amy, D and G, and we went to Shimonoseki, where Amy used to live. Shimonoseki is on another Japanese Island, Kyushu, whereas we now live on Honshu. We met up with her friend Yuka, and later also Rod, and started our sightseeing with a trip to a port in Moji where we ate dinner and then to a bar, and then onto a karaoke marathon. Midnight till 6am. Too much drinking, and too much singing later we were at home passed out. I woke up at 10:30 on Sunday morning wondering why I had yet another hangover (gin never did this to me in England) and lay there between sleep and consciousness (or whatever else you call being not asleep). And then at 10:50 it all went very odd. The apartment where we staying (on the sixth floor) started shaking. Badly. And it didn't stop. The five of us were suddenly all looking at each other, each with the same expression on our faces, one that read "what... is ... happening....SHIT!" and we all stayed where we were with pictures sliding off walls and things slipping off tables until it finished. My first earthquake. There's one for the family album. 2 things. (1) Later news reports stated that if that earthquake had happened in Tokyo, 12,000 would have been killed. It measured between 6.4 and 7 on the seismic scale, but fortunately the epicentre was 70km from where we were and was in the sea, although 16 houses on one island were destroyed, one person killed and 400 injured. (2) The apartment we were staying in was Yuka's boyfriend's. His name is Matt and he was away. After the earthquake, Amy picked up one of the pictures that had fallen and showed me Matt. Who I recognised from university. He had dated a friend's housemate for a long time. It's a small world after all...

Anyway, we had to cancel some of our plans (I had vague plans to visit Fukuoka, but all public transport was closed), and to be honest Amy and I were too hungover anyway. So in the early evening we drove up a mountain and saw a beautiful sunset and took photos. And then went to a beautiful temple that was near the seafront and took pictures. Then we went for dinner and saw Bridget Jones 2. And we didn't take pictures. But the next morning, I wandered round the grounds of Kokura castle and took pictures. And then as I took pictures in the Riverside shopping centre (beautifully modern) I managed to delete all the others I'd taken. Bugger.

The drive home was a long one, and we got back around midnight. Another interesting weekend over. Next weekend sees the astonishing return of my old best friend- Choclit. I shall not be reporting hangovers next week, instead it will be minor heart attacks and diabetes as I over-indulge once again. Yay!