The Great Quake struck at 2:46 pm on Friday, March 11th. The senior class at my junior high school had their graduation ceremony earlier in the day and the school was empty save for the teachers. I was in the staff-room at the time, doing Kegels.
When the earthquake began, I assumed that it was another ho-hum tremor but within seconds the quake intensified exponentially. The floor yawed and pitched and I felt I was going lose my lunch. It was as if the school had been placed on the lid of a lively clothes dryer or in the hands of someone with extreme alcohol withdrawal.
I was going to sit this one out and wait for the shaking to subside but a coworker instructed me to shake a leg and get under my desk. I did my best to fold myself into a fetal position but I am pretty long-stalked and could only fit my head under my desk while the rest of my body lay exposed in a prone position. I lay there wearing my desk as a helmet for about twenty seconds.
Later that evening I told that story over Skype to a correspondent for BBC World but she did not think that it was newsworthy.
Side note: Off the coast of Sendai, the quake measured 9.0 on the Richter scale but was 6.0 here in Ota. This interactive map visualizes the numerous earthquakes that we have experienced since the Great Quake two weeks ago. I recommend syncing the visualization with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
