Last Thursday night about 9:30pm our time, we felt our first mild earthquake in a long time. Growing up in SoCal, they don't quite alarm us as much as they may for others. Saturday morning though at about 1:30am, we were awoken by loud alarms that went off on both of our cell phones. The text just said "Emergency!" and then a bunch of Kanji characters. My mind barely woke up while reading it and before I could freak out about an emergency, the whole room shook and there was no mystery about what the emergency was. The blinds were banging on the windows, water in the toilets sloshing around. It was followed by a few smaller ones. Fortunately our area had no devastation. The epicenter was on a different segment of the country a few hours drive Southwest. They were still recovering from the first earthquake when the second major one hit.
We were planning to go to the little island Miyajima where deer overpopulate the island and will flock to you and let you pet and interact with them. We thought it would be so fun for the kids to take the train and then the ferry over but with the large earthquake, we aired on the side of caution and decided we wouldn't risk being stranded with only public transportation as a means to get back to base. Instead we decided to drive up to Hiroshima to check out a different mall that had H&M and Gap close by.
It was pretty overwhelming, yet again. Being in a busier city in a foreign country is so intimidating. I hope one day I won't be so overwhelmed while we live here. Parking was interesting! Our car went on an elevator for cars. Our previous mall excursions had free parking garages, so I didn't think of how it might be in the bigger city. We were able to get a few things at H&M, but we didn't even begin to see all of the area. I don't think I would go back with the kids. There's too much going on there and none of it kid-friendly.
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