Hello, I hope you are all having a nice Friday so far. I am sad today because most of the Starry fish died. The big earthquake on Wednesday night caused our fish tank to break. On Thursday morning, we found those fish on the floor. We put them in some water, and three of them started swimming again. But they are sick and might not survive for very long. I love all animals, so I want to be able to do something to help them...
We don't have very many earthquakes in Canada. The first time I experienced a really strong earthquake was after I came to Japan. I was teaching an English lesson in Nagano Prefecture way back in 2004 when suddenly everything in the classroom started shaking. I was standing at the time, and explaining something to my students. I didn't know what to do, so I held on to the big whiteboard at the front of the class. But my Japanese students were used to such earthquakes! After the shaking stopped, they told me to continue the lesson. I was still scared, though!! I had to sit down for a couple of minutes. My heart was still beating so fast. Later, I learned that Niigata Prefecture is where most of the damage occurred (Nagano is next to Niigata). Here is a photo of what happened to one of the roads in Niigata because of the earthquake:
There was a landslide, and part of the road fell all the way down almost to the water! So scary!!! But the most famous recent earthquake in Japan is probably the one on March 11th, 2011. I was lucky then, because I had already returned to Canada. Many people have told me about how Tohoku was affected by that earthquake. They said it lasted for quite a while, and was kind of a long, slow shaking which caused some strong tsunami waves to hit the Japanese coast in Iwate, Miyagi, & Fukushima.
A lot of people died. My wife also knew one person who was living in Sendai at that time, so we watched the news from Canada in 2011 and we were so shocked by those terrible images. But one good thing about that disaster is that it made Japan much safer afterwards. These days, we now have earthquake and tsunami warnings which come directly to our smartphones to warn us. And Japanese buildings are very strong now. They are probably the safest buildings in the world in terms of earthquake protection. Most importantly, a lot of people worked together to help each other after that big earthquake. Hopefully, we will all continue to work together whenever something bad happens like this.
Let's be thankful if we are all right now. Nobody likes earthquakes, but we know we will always help each other in the future if another strong earthquake comes again...
- Peter 
