Two natural disasters in one weekend; pretty impressive even for Japan. Around Wednesday or Thursday we began hearing about Typhoon number 4 which was heading up the country from south near Okinawa, due for a Kanto area touchdown on Sunday. On Saturday we got some pretty hard rain storms in the afternoon and evening, but overall nothing big. Sunday in the morning it seemed pretty fine outside, but the storm was definitely on the way. I headed out to 7-11 near my apartment to stock up on supplies for the impending storm. That and I decided I would stay in my apartment all day and finish my resume, which I have been putting off for like the past month. While the storm came and the rain and wind was pretty fierce, it didn’t really seem to be typhoon quality. A bit disappointed there. At the very least, I finished my resume and have started trying to find a new job. First stage is just using the internet and a bunch of sites like GaijinPot and Monster to see if I get any responses with the easy click-and-send resume system. It was pretty pathetic actually getting to work on the resume, because I was in super procrastination mood all day. Reminded me exactly of back in college when I would have a paper or something to do. I somehow found tons of things to distract me as I slowly began the process or totally revamping my resume. I think I watched half a season of Seinfeld, napped a few times, ate lunch and dinner from my 7-11 rations, and even busted out the old Pokemon game on DS. But I finally finished it, and am pretty happy.

This morning, Monday, I awoke around 10:15AM to a strange feeling, as if I was on some kind of boat. Actually it was an earthquake, shaking the ground back and forth for a few minutes from side to side. I also noticed that a shirt I had hanging up and my belts were swaying back and forth like pendulums. It was actually kind of cool. I’ve gotten quite used to earthquakes by now, although there is always the slight fear in the back of my head that it’s going to get a lot worse and the building is going to come crashing down on me. The earthquake was really weak at my place, maybe a 3 on the Japanese quake scale, but at the epicenter up in Niigata it was around 6.6. I think it was quite bad up there, maybe with some casualties. But that was about all the earthquake action for me here in Chiba.

Headed to Soga in the afternoon and saw the new Harry Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix (Japanese title: 不死鳥の騎士団). Overall pretty good, although they have to cut out so much stuff from the books. It’s also funny how old the actors are all getting. Harry Potter looks like he could pass as a businessman in his early 30’s, yet he’s supposed to be 17 years old. Then Ron’s twin brothers look about 40 years old. I was thinking, it’s a good thing that all the teachers and other adults in the Harry Potter world are super old, otherwise it would be pretty obvious how strangely old the “kids” look.

Also, today was a holiday here in Japan, which means nothing as far as days off, since it’s another Monday holiday meaning I get ripped off. Bogus, AEON. Anyway, it was 海の日, or Ocean Day. I’m not quite sure what you’re supposed to do on Ocean Day, but oh well.