[gwjack]

Thanks for posting this article. My daughter is in Ibaraki as a college student this semester. She called me within ten minutes of it happening this morning/evening. She was excited as we don't get to experience quakes in Oklahoma. She slept through the one on Sunday.

I assured her that it was a serious matter, and nothing in which to take delight.

Having already confessed my ignorance about earthquakes, is there anything noteworthy about the two so close together? Can an aftershock (6.5) be larger than the original (5.1)?The one today lasted approximately 1 minute she said.

Gwjack

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Don't know if the quakes were related but when we lived in Yokohama, these happened at the rate of two or three little ones a month and one or two big "up and down" potential window breakers each year.
When electric streetcars ran down the middle of the street, I recall watching one of these cars jump off the track with a shower of sparks from overhead power lines right in front of our house. The streetcar company's wrecker truck showed up and lifted the front of the streetcar back on its rails in about an hour.

[Question_Assumptions]

When I was living in Tokyo, I was sitting in my house one day watching TV with a guy who had grown in in Hawaii and California and lived in Tokyo for many years. The house start shaking lightly and I didn't think anything of it (because they had been doing construction behind us, which sometimes shook the hosue a bit). He ran for the nearest door frame, at which point I realized, "Oh! Earthquake!" and followed him. There was nothing big while I was there but I suspect that if a really big one hits Tokyo directly, it will be far worse than the government there expects it to be.

[gaijin]

She's in Tsukuba, right? Or Mito?