I’m totally fine with the earth moving if you mean how it revolves around the sun.  Because a little further along its oblate trip, summer will end and with it I will stop sweating like a steamed gyoza.  That is the kind of movement of the earth I can support.  Because my cool biz fashion goes beyond a short sleeve shirt sans neck tie to include a jockstrap filled with crushed ice.

But recently the earth has been doing some tectonic jiggling which I am not on board with.  Earthquakes, I’m not a fan.  You see beneath us here in Japan the Filipino, American and pacific tectonic plates are squeezing up against each other. The result is kind of like if the apartment below you had a Filipino, American and pacific islander squeezing up against each other.  It produces, friction, noise and even wall shacking.

My apartment is made, I believe out of flubber re-enforced balsa wood. It appears to have been designed by the laziest of the three little pigs. It has the structural fortitude of a house made of chopsticks and silly putty put together by a special needs kindergarten student for a school project. In the event of an earthquake my apartment shakes like a Mexican space shuttle on lift off, and the only sound louder than the ratting windows and walls is me wailing, “Please god no, I’m almost too young to die.”

I am very much prepared for the big one I have stockpiled a weeks supply of chocolate pocky and 10 liters of pocari sweat.  Also, I have made note of where in my neighborhood I need to go incase of an emergency to loot high value items. 

My Japanese friends have made no such preparations.  I blame this on Math, and Godzilla. They seem to view earthquakes like an attack from Godzilla.  Every now and then, Godzilla just comes and crushes some buildings.  And there is pretty much nothing you can do to stop him.  He’s not evil.  He’s not an enemy.  Its just… fate. Mathematically speaking, in the worst earthquake in recent time, The Kobe tremblor of 95.  The odds of being killed were .004 You have better odds of being killed crossing the street. After all.  Who knows when our end will come and how? The next attack on Akihabara might be Mothra…  he does like electric lights.  So maybe there are some things we just can’t prepare for.