Earthquake!

I am a bit behind with blog posts.  I am moving to my new apartment tomorrow so a bit busy - will catch up soon!

So, today was the first earthquake that I actually felt.  Woke me up at 5:40am.  It wasn't overly intense where I live (2 on the Japanese intensity scale) but enough to wake me up.  It was shallow with magnitude of 5.4 about 100km from Nagoya.  There were many aftershocks (still continuing) but not enough to be felt here (around 3 magnitude each).  There was a prior 4.9 earthquake in the same location at 2:20am but that did not wake me up.

The main quakes:

Issued at	Occurred at	Region Name	Magnitude	Maximum Seismic Intensity (JMA Seismic Intensity)

09:50 JST 27 Feb 2011	09:48 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.7
05:41 JST 27 Feb 2011	05:38 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M5.4
02:21 JST 27 Feb 2011	02:19 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M4.9

Whole list with the after shocks up to now:

Issued at	Occurred at	Region Name	Magnitude	Maximum Seismic Intensity (JMA Seismic Intensity)

13:23 JST 27 Feb 2011	13:19 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.9	1
12:17 JST 27 Feb 2011	12:13 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.9	1
11:28 JST 27 Feb 2011	11:23 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.4	2
09:52 JST 27 Feb 2011	09:48 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.7	3
08:26 JST 27 Feb 2011	08:21 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.4	1
06:53 JST 27 Feb 2011	06:48 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.2	1
06:48 JST 27 Feb 2011	06:43 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.6	1
06:46 JST 27 Feb 2011	06:41 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.1	1
06:14 JST 27 Feb 2011	06:09 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.3	1
06:10 JST 27 Feb 2011	06:05 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.7	1
06:06 JST 27 Feb 2011	06:01 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.3	1
05:51 JST 27 Feb 2011	05:44 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.6	2
05:41 JST 27 Feb 2011	05:38 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M5.4	4
04:54 JST 27 Feb 2011	04:49 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.7	1
04:45 JST 27 Feb 2011	04:40 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.8	1
04:12 JST 27 Feb 2011	04:07 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.9	2
03:36 JST 27 Feb 2011	03:31 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.7	1
03:29 JST 27 Feb 2011	03:24 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.8	1
03:04 JST 27 Feb 2011	02:59 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.2	2
02:54 JST 27 Feb 2011	02:49 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M2.8	1
02:33 JST 27 Feb 2011	02:23 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M3.4	2
02:22 JST 27 Feb 2011	02:19 JST 27 Feb 2011	Gifu-ken Hida-chiho	M4.9	4

Umemi - part 1: Meijokoen

It is getting warmer - will be around 13C this week and 17C on Friday. Spring is coming.

One of the signs of upcoming spring is the blooming of the Japanese apricot (ume) trees.   You probably have heard of umeboshi which is a famous Japanese food - salty/sour pickled ume fruit.  I tried some and they made my mouth twist!  The ume blooming in Nagoya happens typically from middle of February to early March.  The blossoms might not be as well knows as the sakura but they are pretty in their own accord.

Thus, I set on a quest to explore this "umemi" - ume viewing.  In this post, I present part 1: going to Meijokoen (名城公園) on February 20.  I got the information from the awesome Nagoya guide by Kikuko about where to go to see ume trees.  There are lots of places listed so hopefully I will be able to see some of them in the upcoming weeks.  I selected Meijokoen since it is along the way to downtown.  So Today I biked there along this route:

As you can see, in total, that is around 24kms which was totally a bad decision having biked 40kms yesterday.  And that is why I can't sit for very long (and won't be able to bike for a while) since my tail bone hurts!  Meijokoen is that green area at the topleft right above the Nagoya Castle.  In the lower left part of the route is OSU shopping arcade where I had a tasty fish pastry (from the food post).  I then went back home along a somewhat different route.

Meijokoen is a quite nice park and there were quite a number of people there on Sunday.  This is a view of the middle of the park from nearby one of the entrances.

 Closeup on the windmill and flowers:

 
I biked around the park a few times and found around 5 blooming ume trees.  The guide listed 50 trees of 4 varieties... maybe I didn't see or perhaps some of they are not blooming yet.  However, I think I did find 4 varieties of trees so that was exciting!

First of all, this lonely tree with sparse white and pink flowers:

 Flower closeup:

I found some rose trees with white roses - I have only seen red before:

There is a large lake with big fish:

 And a nice island:

 with a nice red rose tree:

 and a cat... seems that homeless people live in the park and take care of many cats:

On the other side, I found a different ume tree with small flowers - very hard to see:

 Closeup of the smaller white flowers:

Near one of the entrances is a large building with 2 ume trees to the side.  First, one with big white flowers:

 Flower closeup and a bee already busy at work:

 Still lots of flowers not open so should look better in a week maybe:

Next to that tree was a red one with large flowers:

Closeups:

When I sat down on my bike to leave after photographing those two, a nice old lady told me I should go inside the building to see flowers and bonsai.  So I thanked her, parked my bike again and went in.  On one side, they had a display of various planted flowers - each of them very delicate looking:

 Some nice pots:

 On one side it looked like a green house with some plants:

 and a fountain:

 and some orchids:

 There were many of those potted flowers:

 On the other side were more potted flowers and some bonsai!  Look at this beautiful bonsai ume tree!

 Another one:

 Other plants:

 Quite green:

 In the middle of the building was a large flowering bush of some sort:

When I was biking away from the park, I found some ume trees near some government buildings:

That is it for now - hopefully will continue with more soon!

Long Bicycle Trip to Kanayama

Yesterday, I went for a long bicycle trip in town.  Basically, in the morning I biked around 10km to pick up some stuff from somebody for the new apartment.  Along the way, there was a nice Japanese style building - I don't know what it is.  Side view:

 Front view?

Another nice building:

  Took a picture of this building since it was a sweats shop and was near my future apartment!  Must go in at some point in time:

Then in the afternoon, I went again to see a few used furniture stores.  I was meeting somebody in Kanayama to go for sushi in the evening.

Here is the map of the way to Kanayama (km markers in circles):

Roughly 16km to get to Kanayama viewing a few used furniture stores along the way.

Here is an example of a used furniture store.  Most of the stuff is really poor condition but some things are not too bad.  The prices are a bit hight for some things like fridges and washing machines.

 Here is another store.  As you can see these stores are very tiny.  Inside is a huge mess of tightly packed stuff.

Found some rose bushes around some electric box on the sidewalk:

  People started to plant flowers since spring is coming.  I saw several old people plantings things in front of their houses/businesses.

 This is a large liquor store - has a nice selection of foreign wine and beer:

 So, this is a Lexus dealership - and I thought Lexus only existed for the North American market.  Well... I'm proven wrong:

 From another side - large building.

This is the north Imaike intersection - you can see my new apartment building in the distance (hehe so I should be able to see this spot from my windows!):

 From the other street, we see an Imaike subway entrance (#12) and further up is the south big intersection:

 Then I biked through Sakurayama (さくらやま - as written in the picture).  I found the sakura bunny to be very cute so I had to take a picture!  Sakurayama is another major center situated around a subway station of that name.

 Found a river canal - one of the 3 main ones through the city:

 Now, this (I assume apartment) building is huge!

 The other side of the river:

  I finally made it to Kanayama around 5:30pm.  Kanayama is a large train station where 3 train networks meet: the JR Central line (Japan railways), Meitetsu line (Nagoya railway), and the subway.  Here  you can see some of the tracks:

 Already started to get dark - nice lights everywhere.  Kanayama is quite a large center with lots of big buildings and restaurants.

 A large street going through Kanayama:

 A train came:

I didn't take any pictures of the sushi place but it was a pretty tasty belt sushi chain restaurant called sushiroo (スシロー).  Although we waited about 1hr in line to get in!

I left Kanayama around 9pm and got home near 10pm.  Here is the map of the way I took home - right along a railway for a while:

So, all in all, I biked around 40kms that day and my butt started to hurt from too much sitting on the bike!

A bit off-topic but tree pruning has started it seems.  On campus, they pruned these big bushy trees to look like this.  I don't know how often they do that but looks scary:

 Also, going somewhere I managed to find a Toys'R'Us store!