A City of Miracle
2005.03.22 5:12

According to the meteological agency, the possibility of earthquake in Fukuoka was less than once out of one millennium. As such this city was a rarest area hit by earthquakes, as I wrote in my previous JE, only two times in its long history - first in early 8th century and second in 1898 and the third one was this time if we can call this a 'major' earthquake.
There were three major earthquakes in urban area in history, one is 1923 in Tokyo, which claimed more than 140,000 lives and the other was in 1995 in Kobe, which claimed 6,433 human loss.
Richer scale of two earthquakes were Tokyo - 7.9 and Kobe - 7.2 considerably stronger than that of this time's earthquake here - 6.4, though damage of our city was almost nill. Indeed we were lucky.
First settlers came to Japan and started living in Fukuoka early first century AD. Since then this city continues to be a city for two millenniums. Japan's frontier went from west to east as opposed to that of USA, so it has been generally thought that the history of Fukuoka City started from 57AD, when the state of Na received the golden seal, which certified the sovereignty of the state by then Han dynasty in China. Kobe was openned as a port in 1180AD and Tokyo was first appeared in Japan's history in 1457AD.
Roughly speaking in Fukuoka area 3 million people live, in Kobe area 14 million people live and in Tokyo area 33 million people live.
Oldest city continues to exist despite earthquake hit, as it used to be. There is a reason to be oldest in Japan.
By the way I was neither educated nor born still less raised in this city. I was living here just because I found it easy, interesting to live. Till now for six years.