Japanese and Quake
Japanese people are used to earthquakes.
They think so. I used to think so too. I became even more convinced when I was taking a lecture at university. I was listening to the guest speaker, a professor from France, in the main lecture room when there was a slight earthquake that caused the fluorescent lights to vibrate lightly.
The hundreds of people in the room ignored the quake and focused on the guest speaker, but the professor, feeling unsafe, balanced himself a little on his hands and said, with the first laugh of the class, “You guys are very used to this, aren’t you? Laughter”. At that moment, all the students and even the Japanese professor who was teaching the class beside us burst out laughing and the mood was very friendly.
Normally, it would be correct to be prepared to run to the door every time you feel danger, as the professor did, but most Japanese people ignore earthquakes and continue with their studies or work, unless it is an earthquake that causes things on their desks to fall.
Japanese earthquake scale and people feeling.
Magnitude the earthquake scale means energy quantity. 1 point up means 200 times. So M8 is M7’s 200 times impact. Asided from the scale, Japan(and other countries also have)has own the domestic seismic intensity ranges, which scale from 1 to 7.
Then ,there are about five earthquakes every day of about 1. By the time you get to 3, everyone will know for sure that you are shaking, the leaves on the trees will shake and your computer display may shake depending on the direction you are facing. If you stay in Japan for a year, you will probably experience an earthquake of 3 at least once.
When an earthquake of intensity 5 or higher occurs, the TV program is often rescheduled to show information about the area where the earthquake occurred. However, there are still earthquakes of 5 somewhere in Japan every year.
From this point onwards, things fall over and, in rare cases, people are injured. I remember hiding under my desk and running out of the shop after a magnitude 5 earthquake.
After the earthquake in Tohoku, many Japanese people are afraid of tsunami. We are not used to it, except for those who live near the sea. So, unless there is a huge meteorite, even people who are tens of kilometres away from the sea and have no need to be afraid are thinking about tsunami preparedness.
Japanese media
After the Great East Japan Earthquake, TV and radio warnings have become less specific, perhaps to avoid responsibility. This is a complete canned message that has not changed a single word on any station. We learn in primary and secondary school that waves are amplified in inlets, but perhaps the media are traumatised by the failure to give proper information about the waves in the Tohoku region, which has a rias coast full of inlets.
But because there is really no concrete information, the tsunami is coming! Please take action to save your life! and then you get a 20cm tsunami. The quality of the reporting may be deteriorating, as they may move on to the next programme without saying anything about it, such as “Sorry for making such a big fuss about it, but it was small. Studies have shown that if you repeatedly make a big deal out of such a minor tsunami, it will cause more damage when a really big one hits. Yes, I know. I’m sure the people who do this have no ill intentions, but it’s almost like the story of Aesop’s the boy who cried wolf…
