OK, this was scary… somewhen around midnight tonight, I got up in fear… the entire room was rattling and shaking… wow… lucky me I was sleeping in a ryokan (means futon rather than western style beds) so I could not fall out of my bed… but this wake up call was scary… in my panic I looked for some shelter close to the wall (which is actually an error as I should have looked for shelter under the door bow)… so there with a pulse of 180 and my adrenalin at record high I was awaiting that any moment the house will collapse (the picture is the place I stayed in tonight - after the quake)… but 40 seconds or so later the room stood still and the shaking stopped… my neighbours in the hotel, all Japanese, were pretty relaxed about this… besides some mumbling from the other rooms, there were not much reaction from them… now I read that the earthquake had 6.8 on the Richter scale… and the epicenter was close to Morioka some 70km away from my shaking place… wow, even the bullet train to Morioka was suspended today (and this happened only once before)… that means I will take the slow train - 2 hour something compared to a 38 minute tide on the shinkansen… although I am scared of any after quake I still decided to go there as Morioka and the surroundings were supposed to be my most northern destination for this trip - and being Austrian, there has to be more than just the biggest earthquake this year to keep me away… honestly, I never experienced something like this, not even when I was living in San Francisco… what more to say that  I am so happy about Japanese technology… their technology in house construction might have saved my life tonight…