Weather and Earthquakes

So many of you have been asking about the weather in Japan and if I have felt any earthquakes so I thought I would put it in one little posting for all of you to read.  

As far as the weather is concerned, it has been raining constantly for the past 3 days.  It switches from sprinkling to heavy rain off and on pretty much all day. In Arizona, when it rains it gets colder and a little humid, but the humidity goes away after the rain stops.  Well, in Tokyo, the temp stays the same but the humidity increases by a lot.  Somedays it feels like I'm swimming in the air and other days it's not so bad.  But on somedays, like today, when the humidity is really high, it feels like I didn't dry off from taking my shower and it makes me sweat.  Now, being European, I have a tendancy to sweat a lot and in a very short time.  Here in Japan, the Japanese people just don't seem to sweat, like ever.  I hardly see anyone really sweaty.  Most places here don't have air conditioning, and if they do, it is only on for a certain period of time because they try to save energy.  It's really annoying.  Especially if you are in a traditional Japanese Inn (Ryokan) they turn the air off at night.  I woke up about 3 times because I was sweating so much.  It was just disgusting.  I don't know how they can live here without air circulation.  At school, they have AC only in the class rooms being used that day.  They don't have it in the hallways or other rooms that are going to be unused.  It makes sense, but it feels quite miserable in the buildings other wise.  The worst part about the humidity in the rain is that it feels so stuffy.  Bleh!  I feel like I'm suffocating all the time.

When I was in Takayama and Nagano and Matsumoto, the sun was out and it never rained, so the humidity was hardly noticeable and it wasn't so bad.  The heat (if you can even call it that) is equivalent to Arizona's spring weather.  There is one girl from Alaska (as a side note, she is my neighboor and she is singing quite loudly for some reason in her room.  These walls have no insoluation what so ever) she is complaining about how hot it is all the time.  She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.  She said that most of her friends went to Sapporo and Hokkaido.  Sapporo is an island north of central Japan and is very mountainous, so it gets extremely cold in the winter and never really gets warm in the summer, like around 65 degrees or so.  She understands now why they went there, because the weather there is similar to the weather in Sapooro or Hokkaido.  She is just dying in Tokyo.  I told her never to come to Arizona in the summer time because she would probably just die.

As for the earthquakes, Japan has earthquakes daily.  Tokyo mostly gets them.  They are usually so small that no one even notices them.  Unless you live in Arizona were there are absolutely no earthquakes what so ever, then you notice them.  At first I thought I had virtigo, but I didn't feel like my head was compressed.  Usually when I have virtigo, the world seems to be spinning and my head feels like it's all stuffed up, but these feelings weren't like that.  I later discovered that Tokyo has about 3 earthquakes a day, and they are so minor that it's not even worth mentioning.  One of the girls here also experiences what she thought was virtigo and looked up Tokyo earthquakes online. She has been keeping track of the times she felt like something was not quite right then later would look up the earthquakes and sure enough, they were earthquakes.  They are so tiny that no one else in japan feels them because they live here, but for someone like me who never feels them, it's noticeable everytime.  There was even a moment when my water was moving and everything was swaying from side to side.  It almost felt like I was riding a boat.  That happened 2 days ago and I was not the only one who noticed it.  A few other people did too.  Someone had looked it up and apparently down in Kyoto there was a big earthquake and we were getting the tail end of it.  

There is no need to worry though.  The chances of me experiencing a huge earthquake during the next 3 weeks are extremely slim.  Very large earthquakes are not that common.  They happen every few years.  And if they do occur, the buildings here are as earthquake proof as they get.  In my earthquake safety packet (I hate packets at this point) they say to head inside a building if you are near one.  So do not worry!!  I will be fine. :)