There was an Earthquake!

Yes, you read write. There was indeed an earthquake.
First time for me to be in an earthquake - Quite an experience.
Japan is unfortunately prone to earthquakes, and they normally occur every couple of months. The earthquake this morning ranged from 3 - 4 depending on the area. Luckily enough, Sachiko believes it was only a 2 that we felt.

Looking back on what happened, Sachiko and I were just lying down on my bed together chatting, when suddenly the house began to shake. Sachiko immediately said "Earthquake!", and we both just sat still. It only lasted a few seconds, but to me it felt quite strong - Quite scary for the moments it was rumbling. Nothing actually fell off of anything, but there was a loud concrete moving sound and the house rumbled around, moving left and right slightly.
As soon as it stopped, she turned on the TV. Within 10 seconds the little warning beeps on the TV went off, and subtitles on the top of the current program (the news) told that an earthquake just occurred, detailing where and what each magnitude was.

Before I felt how strong this little one was, I couldn't imagine how strong a 6 or 7 would be. Now I worry about a 4 let alone a 6/7 etc!
A very new experience to me, and I'm glad that I was able to see what it's like, however scary.

Not thinking about earthquakes, Sachiko and I have decided to take a holiday from our 'holiday' by getting away from the house and going to Kyoto. We brought the tickets today, leaving 6:30am tomorrow morning at Tokyo station via Hikari Super Express Shinkansen (Bullet Train). It will be the first time for me on a shinkansen! So exciting.

We're staying for 2 nights, in a hotel quite close to the station (3 mins walk). I'll be posting up a lot of photos as soon as I get back ^^ The trip is costing about 28,000 each including train trip and accommodation.

In celebration of my trip to Kyoto tomorrow, I brought a tripod today! Whee.
I brought a Slik 500EX Pro. It set me back about 18,000 after I used up all my points. (Yodobashi has a point's card, where for every purchase, you get 10% worth of points. Ie, if you purchase something for 10000 yen, you get 1000 points. Each point is worth 1 yen, so you will get 1000 yen off your next purchase. Or you can choose to save up your points and buy something bigger later.)
It seems that tripods are a bit more expensive in Japan than in the US or Aust. I suppose due to importing and such, but I wasn't able to argue a better price anyway. Fantastic tripod though.
This photo is one I took with it outside my balcony window.
For those in the know of photography, it was a 20 second exposure, full manual, 100ISO, f/16 using a 50mm f/1.8

Also, for those who don't know, I'm a lover of Versace. We don't have any Versace boutiques in Adelaide, so I'm in heaven when I get to go to the 2nd largest one in the world. (LA has the largest, which is where Gianni Versace used to live.
I didn't buy anything this time due to lack of funds, however there were a few shirts I was dying for. But like anything Versace, it isn't exactly cheap - The shirts were 30% off and of an older collection and were still a good $450 Australian each.
But the guy there was super nice, and realized I like Versace and had a good chat with me. When he knew I liked Elton John too, he showed me the watch Elton has :D Elton has the same watch but serial number 1. It was about 6,000,000 yen too.

Anyway, I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but I have PSP's
I had 4 actually, but I sold one recently, and I'm trying to sell the rest on Ebay. See below :)
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=8168398075&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
The story of getting the PSP's is quite a long one, so I'll talk about it later.

Anyway, I better start packing ^^

PLEASE NOTE! Photos aren't uploading properly atm, will fix soon.