Hanshin Earthquake

It it hard to believe that the earthquake was only 10 years ago. I clearly remember that morning. Before the clock turned to 6 o`clock, my whole house shook a lot. For some reason, I was sleeping with my sister in my bed together. We often have earthquakes in Japan and they are sometimes just small ones, you can sort of feel it. I woke up with the movement and so did my sister. I was really considering what to do because the movement didn`t finish as soon as it usually did. "Should I stand up?" "Should I go to my parents room?" "Should I escape from the house?" .. All of a sudden my sister awoke and stood up from the bed, and then she tried to hold the ceiling lamp in the room so the edge of the lamp didn`t touch the ceiling. She thought that it was shaking too much and that it could drop down from the ceiling. I was still not sure what to do. We waited for about 1 minute. Finally the earthquake stopped. I heard my mom go to see her kitchen and then come to our room. Some stuff on the counter top fell down to the ground but we didn`t have a huge problem.

Where we lived is not so close to the center of the earthquake. It might take more than 2 hours to drive there. But that is how big this earthquake was in the whole western Japan area . We had a couple of earthquakes afterwards but we still had classes that day. No one was hurt or injured in my school or area.

One of my friends who lived in Kobe(the center of this earthquake) said that they had a terrible time because of this. It reminded the elderly of WW2. Some people started scream and tell everybody "B29s are coming!!!". Many people experienced trauma. Houses were burning. People lost everything. They had no food and finally started to be served some food from the government 2 days after the earthquake.

Isn`t this terrible?

Now I live in SF and I know there was a big earthquake like this before. Japan is well-known for having many earthquakes, and so is SF. What a connection.

I need to always be prepared for the worst situation to happen. And I need to appreciate how good God is. My life everyday is beautiful and I shouldn`t forget this.