We all remember what we were doing on March 11, 2011- I had arrived at the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania 8 days prior. I was suffering from insomnia at the time so I was wide awake laying in my bed around 2am when I received a text from my mother that read, “There was a 9.0 earthquake in Japan.” 9.0, surely, it was bad.

I am a Los Angeles native so earthquakes are nothing new to me, but 9.0, that’s scary. My mother taught me to always keep shoes by my bed just in case I had to run outside suddenly. I’ve always done that, but storing food and water, keeping emergency supplies and having an emergency backpack ready never made it to the list of routine tasks to do.  I always knew about the importance of preparing for a disaster, but I’ve never felt the need to truly be ready…until now!

Since coming to Japan, I haven’t been worried about earthquakes but the one on January 1st unsettled me a bit. My former housemates had starting preparing emergency water and food supplies last March, but most of the water and food were reaching their expiration date, so I decided to clean out the supplies.

Then, on January 28th, we felt a rather large and steady earthquake around 7:10am.

Ironically, I had written that note to my housemates just a day before this earthquake.

-If you don’t have an emergency backpack, go to a website and find out how to prepare one.

-If your shared house does not have an emergency plan, create one.

-If you don’t have emergency food, water and supplies, buy some.

Are you prepared? I’m not, but I will be.

Namaste