Small report on Hokkaido earthquake this week

I'm happy to be living quite far away from it but what came next after waking me up was a power outage that instantly allowed me to see the Milky Way in its whole beauty (that is, 200km around was completely dark, the entire Hokkaido went down in a few seconds).

When I heard there is a serious problem over there that has no resolution estimates, I went to the closest convenience store to buy whatever stuff was there. Point was as many people sleep on the first floor they weren't woken up, so it was quite a lot of stuff to buy yet. Got canned food, bread, chocolate, cookies, whatever lasts long enough.

Next I went to the supermarket that was supposed to open at 8 AM, and they were selling minimally required goods outside. Bought water, canned food, batteries, gas bottles, etc.

After that I allowed myself to relax a bit and assess the situation. Surprisingly enough that convenience store I went in the morning already had power but I thought that was because of solar panels or something. And moreover, cell towers were operating well, with internet access. Used that a bit to let my relatives know I'm good.

It all was in our favor, the typhoon passed just a day ago and brought very warm air, therefore the two first days were very comfortable even at nights so we didn't need to even warm up a lot of water to take a shower, just two kettles were fine. The water was running. And even the gas line was operational. So I didn't care much about electricity, basically I don't, but see, winter is approaching, now the temperature drops quite rapidly overnight. And imagining this would have happened during winter: cars would be worthless because roads wouldn't be plowed, now you can't walk far away, you need skis or snowshoes, no food/water delivery, global freezing of water pipes, no heaters operating without electricity, no nothing. You won't last a day.

Now this taught me to be prepared and from now on I am: I ordered a generator, gas-bottle operated portable heaters, a huge battery to power up tiny devices like laptops etc, gasoline storage can, and of course now we have a stock of food and water.

Radio was extremely important to be aware and make timely decisions, but of course it's all Japanese-only so... I'm simply lucky to know it well enough to figure out all the information they pass.

Anyway I was just lucky to not live in the epicenter area. It's a complete mess over there with 39 people deceased and hundreds of injured with SAR still going on. Our house just shook a bit and that's it.

The whole thing may not be over yet, if the next big earthquake comes (as it was in Kumamoto) it may completely kick out power for an actual week or more this time. Well, I'm more ready for that now, still a lot of my orders are not shipped out due to temporary stop in processing and accepting shipments to Hokkaido in most carriers. At least we have food for weeks ahead now.

If you live in Japan, especially on the mainland, for a long time it's basically unforgivable for you to NOT have at the very least the food and water stock ready for immediate evacuation. I lived without it for over two years in Nagoya and never felt too bad about it. Now I started considering things recently, especially after my daughter was born, like, what to do in case of fire, how to evacuate the house, and so on.

Stay safe.