2011年8月9日

Today was another easy day in 日本語。 We had a new grammar point (which is my kind of grammar point):

私は黒いセーターをもっています。あかいのももっています。

の-takes place of repeated noun making the response quicker and more natural.

We also had 四あたらしかんじ。。。買、町、長、道

And someone brought up earthquakes before the start of class today, so that got the wheels in my head grinding. I had a sneaking suspicion the fault in St. Louis ベッツィー先生was talking about was the New Madrid Fault, even though I said I didn’t know.

It runs through a good portion of the Midwest United States. I’m not sure, but this could be the NOVA special she was talking about today and I remember seeing it a few years ago..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/earthquakes-midwest.html

I could still be wrong about this being the fault, because there are so many all over the place. But it’s the most notable one in our region, and there have been several somewhat significant earthquakes in our area because of it in the past few decades, which is a good thing, since it releases the stored energy in the fault. So when it does “let go” there is not so much energy released as there would be if there had not been a quake for a longer stretch of time which is the situation So-Cal is in.

Southern Cali is overdue for a major quake, but thankfully is not at risk of 津波 due to the strike-slip fault type. Which, of course, is of little to no consolation when your house is a pile of rubble, is swept away in a landslide created by a seismic event, or the highway overpass you are driving across suddenly collapses.

San Andreas Fault, a Dextral (right-lateral) Strike-Slip Fault.

So where was I going with all of this? Oh yeah. There was also a NOVA special that was on a few months ago and is available to watch in its entirety here: Japan’s Killer Quake.

津波 Wave Propogation Model 2011年3月11日