Last Friday on April 20, 2007 I woke up at around 4:30 in the morning to the first noticeable earthquake in the two years I've been on Okinawa. I have felt other small tremors where the building I work at would shake but it would be hard to tell if I just imagined it or it was from construction on the base.

It was scary because I felt like someone pushed me or pushed the bed to wake me up. My first thought was there's someone else is here or my apartment is haunted! Then for about 30 seconds it was like a very rythmic moving wave sensation kind of like being on a boat. Above my bed there are some storage shelves with boxes and extra blankets so as soon as I realized it was an earthquake I hopped out of bed thinking it might get worse and all that stuff was going to fall down on my head! Luckily it stopped right away and as far as I could tell there weren't any aftershocks or tsunami's. I listened up for any annoucements in Japanese on the local PA system. I'm not sure if I would understand a tsunami warning....hopefully I could pick out the time I have left to get to higher ground!

I just found this interesting website by the US Geological Survey. Turns out it was a 5.7 on the Richter scale and about 50 miles from my apartment. The article has an interesting link to a map and a survey on where/when/what you experienced. I also subscribed to an alert that will send me an email with information on a 5.5 magnitude or higher quake.