We had a very unusual occurrence last night around 1am: a somewhat large earthquake (5.3 on the Richter scale) hit England not that far from Sheffield. The result was a massive shaking of our building for about 10 seconds. We didn't know what we going on, so we went outside where we were joined by our neighbors. No one knew if it was an earthquake or just our building so Victoria and I went to the hotel and asked. They said they had felt it too, so it must have been an earthquake. It's on the news today as it is the largest one in 25 years. Apparently they get about 10 small ones each year in England though.

Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm

It is the first earthquake I can remember being in. I didn't feel any in Japan, though there were some in other parts of the country while I was there. Toyama is known for having a small amount of earthquakes compared to the rest of Japan. It was kind of exciting but a bit scary as well.

Earlier last evening the police sealed off the parking lot across the street from our building too. Apparently a man was at the top who said he was going to jump. However, I didn't find this out until today, so I was a bit worried there was a potential bomb or something. So when everything shook during the earthquake, I was concerned something else might have happened. It didn't take long to look at the window and see the parking lot was there though, plus there was no explosion sound.

Been too busy to write recently, as my two courses I am taking are eating up most of my free time. I had an assignment due on Monday, so I got to spend some of my birthday working on that. I still had a good time though, and didn't work the whole day.

Recently it has gotten really cold, with temperatures of -7 and -8 (C) at night. Today there has been frost on the ground the whole day with a lot of fog. It even snowed a little. Hopefully it will start to get warm again soon.