Strange one today. I couldn’t sleep at all, so I stayed up online talking to a friend about not much for hours. When I tried to go to sleep the earth started to shake. 5:13 in the morning to be exact. The Japanese used to have a widely held superstition that a Shinto deity named Kashima Daimyojin could stop earthquakes by holding down a giant catfish to the earth. It seems that once ago the earth’s center was infested with these fish and that when they tussled about they would unwittingly unleash seismic destruction unto the Japanese islands. Is Kashima Daimyojin still attending to his duties?

Earthquakes aren’t new to me by any means, but lately it seems Japan is getting rattled by more decent size shakes than usual. Of course the obligatory “when will the next big one strike” scare tactics laced headlines are all over google news now. Also, the Japanese media can’t stop talking about this one and the possibility (eventuality, anyone?) of bigger and badder ones in the near future. I’m still replaying the same video of people in a Shizuoka news room diving for safety. That’s fine. I mean, I get that I live in this country and that there is the chance that at any moment everything could come tumbling down. I’m OK with that. It seems that everyone else here is OK with that as well.

Anyways, Lucky was scared stiff. Just kind of starring off into the void while the shaking subsided and the birds resumed their calls. Poor guy, I think that was his first quake since he started living here. As I tried to go back to sleep I started thinking of Enya’s “The Return to Innocence” for some reason. I thought this was really odd and tried to get it out of my head but then I realized that either someone was actually playing the song upstairs or I was going insane. The girl told me it was 読経(dokyo) or the chanting of the sutras. I thought that was odd to hear it right after an earthquake, but this is after all Obon and the dead need to return home. I hope the shaking all around the Kanto won’t dissuade them from returning this year.