Adaptation to frequent natural disasters

A while ago, someone asked me what kinds of natural disasters we have in Canada. I had to think about it for a while before tentatively responding "...ice storms?". I know that there are sometimes hurricanes that hit the East coast (and rarely come further inland) and there are tornadoes sometimes too. These things don't tend to have the same impact as giant earthquakes or typhoons and they lack the frequency of the small earthquakes that serve as a reminder of what will happen some time.

Compared to Japan, Canada (especially Southern Ontario) has relatively few issues with nature. As a result, moving here can create all sorts of little worries about the earthquakes, typhoon and so forth early on.
 
However, one thing I've noticed is how easy it is to get used to the natural disasters that happen here. The first time I felt an earthquake here, I was sleeping. It woke me up and I maybe got a bit concerned, even though it was relatively small. It's pretty startling if you've never really experienced an earthquake before and waking up suddenly can result in some general confusion (especially when the room is shaking).

There were a few like that here in the first few months I moved to Japan. I'd wake up and hit daid in the face because I was startled out of a deep sleep. Now, I hardly notice them most of the time and I've slept through a few. I also experienced the largest earthquake here since 2011 without being especially concerned.
 
Similarly, the first time a typhoon came here, I was worried. The city's safety committee made several announcements in addition to their usual daily announcements and daid's work sent him several emails reminding him to take precautions and assuring him that he didn't have to come into work if it was risky. I made sure to close all the windows and took the clothes drying bar down and all this, but by the time the typhoon got here, it didn't even rain in Tokyo.

The last two typhoons were dubbed "super typhoons" at some point in the media (especially in US sources), but nothing really happened here. We got soaked going to the convenience store and the wind rattled our windows most of last night, but not much really happened otherwise. The one last week meant that some places closed because they didn't want to encourage people to go outside, but it wasn't really bad at all.

While Japan is hit by many typhoons and some people die or are injured by them, most of the injuries tend to be in Okinawa, which is really, really far south and tends to be the first place typhoons headed this way make landfall (and even then, many of the injuries and deaths are to people who do stupid things like standing on the beach photographing the waves or going surfing). By the time a typhoon has made its way through the rest of the archipelago and through the west of the country to get here, it's not nearly so impressive.

Yes, a major earthquake like the one in 2011 could happen again and yes, a typhoon could make landfall on the Kantō plain first. Maybe when one of those happens, I'll get worried again. For now, the typhoons that beat themselves up on the other islands and mountains on their way here and the little day-to-day earthquakes are not especially concerning.

Settling In

I've been in Japan for almost a week and I got to feel my first earthquake for this trip already yesterday morning (last time I also got an earthquake). It was a magnitude 5.5 and a 3 on the JMA seismic intensity scale locally (in Wako-shi). It was startling to wake up to the room rattling and I might have punched daid in the face, but apparently he forgot this.

On the weekend, daid threw me a Welcome to Japan! party. In preparation for the party, we visited the local liquor store and found that they carry Chimay as well as a few good beers from Nagano (apparently this is where the good Japanese beer comes from). I'll still miss Canadian beers it seems, but at least there's an option that is more familiar than the local beers and also delicious.

We played Cards Against Humanity at the party which provided me with an opportunity to learn some interesting words in Japanese, but unfortunately I did not retain them.  Probably it's for the best, since I'd rather avoid stumbling around for a correct word in Japanese and come up with the one for boner when that's not what I want to discuss.

We're still settling into the new apartment. daid moved just before I got here and we're in the process of acquiring things like furniture and appliances. We finally figured out how to connect the washing machine to the tap today. It had some weird plastic thing sticking out and we couldn't snap the hose onto the tap properly. We'd been working under the assumption that we were missing a connecting piece until we went to Bic Camera and the guy just handed us the most expensive washing machine connector and tried demonstrating how to deal with it without being helpful at all. I think that he caught that we didn't understand and he might have actually thought we'd buy whatever he handed us, but we put it back and just went home to fiddle with it more and we got a proper explanation today so now it works.

The apartment is coming together and even though it's missing things like furniture or an internet connection, it's starting to feel a bit like home. I'm sure that once I have some drawers to put my clothes in instead of living out of my suitcase and get better at finding my way around here, that will only get better.