6.0 at 16:35

It was any lazy Saturday afternoon. Noshing on pork tonkatsu in my room, I waited for my laundry in the dryer downstairs. I was thinking about the long night ahead of me at a party I would attend in Ebisu. And then my soy sauce shook. Make that the whole building, first slowly then harder. My door was propped open, and outside I saw power lines bouncing. Jishin da (Oh, an earthquake), I muttered to myself. At least sleep wasn’t interrupted this time.

Realizing that the rumbling was only increasing, I dropped my Hello Kitty chopsticks and crouched in the entryway. It sounded like Godzilla was waking up the neighborhood. Across the alley an elderly man, jarred from an afternoon nap, stood by the window in his underclothes. Dissonant metallic groans resonated through these sleepy side streets. Buildings, bridges, and car parks were movin’ to Mother Nature’s beat. Self-reassurance that it’s going to end any moment now began to shift to how much worse was it gonna get? Before I could ponder – could it be, the long overdue “big one” – the temblors died.

Neighbors poked their heads out of doors and windows. I felt like screaming “WHOO HOO!” at the top of my lungs, as an exclamatory release to the adrenaline rush of surviving an uncontrollable act. While fortunately not the big one, this 6.0 quake was the strongest to shake up the capital in 13 years.

Tokyo is the most disaster-prone city in the world because tens of millions of people populate a dense metropolis built on an active seismic fault. Munich Re indexes San Francisco’s insured risk at 167. Tokyo’s is 710. I’m not sure what units they’re talking about, but the difference is evident.

What this means for Tokyo Tanenhaus is that while I have an emergency fanny pack handy, I’m going to insure myself with extra water, rice crackers, and cups of Häagen-Dazs. It seems that rest of Tokyo needs to wake up and stock up in the wake of Saturday’s foretaste of expected disaster.