My First Earthquake!

So.  It has finally happened.  My first earthquake.  There I was sitting in my classroom a few minutes before class started  with a couple of students.  Then the building creaked and I felt something.  It wasn't really a shake so much as a small hiccup.  I wouldn't have thought twice about it , but my students looked up at each other and one said "Jishin?"  The other student nodded in agreement and they went back to their writing undisturbed.  I recognized the Japanese word for earthquake and began as my students, half in English and half in Japanese, "Was that an earthquake? Jishin?" They said yes and looked at me as a crazy person as I giggled and started looking out the windows.  The earthquake (click here for the USGS data on it) as a whopping 5.6 on the Richter scale, which is actually fairly large and can damage poorly constructed buildings.  It was, however, 75 kilometers (45 miles) away, so we were barely affected.  Apparently people felt it as far away as Tokyo.  A 5.6 earthquake might be big news to me, but it didn't even make local news here.  I could only find evidence that I didn't imagine it on the USGS earthquake site.  Well, that chapter of "Firsts in Japan" complete, I must wrap up and go to bed.  However, this was exciting enough to warrant a blog post immediately.  For those who are interested, David didn't feel it, he was at a school a bit farther away today.  I will write a longer, more interesting post later, but for now, sayonara!