Every Japanese person knows: in an earthquake, the most important thing is to quickly hide under a table. This is not a joke. Ask any Japanese person, or any of the gaijin living there. I’ll tell you more in a moment, of course. But first, a little history.
Japan has always been shaken around. The Japanese islands themselves formed from the collision of the Pacific and the Eurasian tectonic plates. A collision is not a fast process. In fact, it’s still going on — hence the constant tremors. The people quickly came up with a fitting legend: beneath the islands lives a giant catfish named Onamazu. When he thrashes, both the land and the sea shake. The legend is ancient, but even today the catfish shows up on the logo of the Japan Meteorological Agency and on the logo of the earthquake early-warning system. By the way, the catfish wasn’t always a villain. The common folk were often glad of an earthquake, as a chance for the whole nation to start with a clean slate. And after the earthquake of 1855 (magnitude 7, 7,000 dead), a legend even went around that Onamazu had been aiming at the United States, but missed slightly and hit Japan again. Force of habit, presumably. I’ll explain (in another post) why, in 1855, the Japanese weren’t exactly thrilled with the States.
Logically enough, the Japanese were among the first to learn to predict earthquakes. A local seismologist predicted the catastrophe of 1923 very accurately. That time, 174,000 people died in Tokyo and Yokohama, and another half a million are still listed as missing. And apparently they’ll be listed that way forever. Since 1923, essentially all of Tokyo has been rebuilt from scratch. With new technology.
Now every building has a special foundation. On springs, sort of. I’m not an architect, so I won’t attempt to explain it in detail. But these springs, made of metal and rubber, absorb part of the horizontal shaking, so a building can stay standing even if Onamazu really goes to town.
Today, everyone in Japan goes through special training on what to do in an earthquake. The correct answer is: get under a table. Because if you’re on the 40th floor, your options are limited. If the building collapses (foundation notwithstanding), nothing is going to help you anyway. And if it stays up, you can still get injured by something heavy hitting you on the head. So hide under a table. There are even special training simulators. “Onamazu is shaking your room now” — and you have to hide, fast.
And it’s precisely the earthquakes that are behind the difficulties with the visa. You have to give the consulate a detailed plan of your trip. Ideally accurate to the hour. So that, if something happens, they know where to dig out your remains. In our case the plan was provided by the agency we did our visas through. Thankfully, the plan wasn’t needed.