Geology

I learned more about Japan's Geology like earthquakes, volcano's, and tsunamis. The earthquakes mostly happened around 75 years ago (September 1, 1923). One of the worst earthquakes hit Kanto and destroyed Tokyo, Yokohama and it's surrounding areas. That would be scary! Around 140,000 people fell victim to the earthquakes and the fires caused by it. I would be terrified if an earthquake started while I was visiting!

The majority of Japan's mountains are formed from volcanoes. Japan's highest mountain is Mount Fuji. It has the total of 3,776 metres! Here is a picture of me in-front of it! I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it. It's way bigger than it is in the pictures on google! It can be found bordering the Yamanashi and Shizuika Prefectures. It is easy to forget that the huge mountain is actually a volcano! It's like a volcano that's covered in snow!

The Tsunami's are huge! I had the biggest surprise when we walked out from the hotel this morning! There was a big wave on the beach nearby. It hadn't gone far though, only about about twenty metres. We went right to the hotel manager, and asked what was going on. He said that that was a small Tsunami, and that in the morning of Saturday, September 1, 1923 it was very warm with some gusts of wind that came behind a bit of rain. Soon it was close to the afternoon and in the area around Sagami Bay the ground began to shake! A section of the fault under the bay was measured to have been displaced nearly 240m, and although no surface faults appeared, new ridges 180 to 300 ft tall appeared on the sea floor area in line with a pre-existing volcanic chain. The ground was uplifted and hundreds of landslides were set off. This Kanto Earthquake generated a tsunami approximately 30-40ft high which crashed onto shore about 5 minutes later. Many people were killed, houses were destroyed, and nearly 45% of the population was left unemployed. It took all of us a while to piece together the puzzle of a story (and especially because he didn't know much English, we used the Japanese English dictionary, which we needed almost all day). It was an exciting day, but I got a picture from the hotel earthquake/tsunami watchers!

Kayla