Earthquakes and Male Nudity

So I just experienced my first earthquake!
I was sitting in the staffroom of one of the schools and suddenly the school started shaking violently. It's difficult to describe, but it kinda felt like standing on a piece of wood secured at each side by ropes so you can't really get a solid footing.
The school shook a few times and then settled down to swaying gently. You could see the other school buildings rocking gently back and forth.
At first I was like "what the hell is happening!", then I remembered Japan is earthquake central and I'm surprised it hasn't happened before now!
It only lasted a minute and the worst was over in 10 seconds but it was a fascinating experience, made scary by the fact that it was my first one!

Apparently it hit Shikoku, one of the other main islands, and we just caught the tail end of it.

I was in Shikoku a few days ago. The local International Association organised a day-trip over there and it absolutely rocked! Myself, 3 other foreigners and about 11 Japanese packed onto a bus at 7:30am and were immediately offered beer.
We passed over the Seto-Hashi which is a huge bridge that crossed the Seto Inland Sea from Honshu over to Shikoku. The view was amazing and there were all these smaller islands dotted around the place.

Our first stop was a town called Kompira where there's a mountain with steps going all the way to the top. There's shrines and temples the whole way up and it's pretty mind-blowing. Every few hundred steps there's this beautiful temple and a shit-load of kick ass Japanesey stuff. We spent a few hours climbing up and the view from the top was amazing.
On the way down we happened to see a traditional Japanese wedding which was taking place in one of the temples. It was great!
Once we reached the bottom I had potato ice-cream. Yes, potato and green-tea are just a few of the insane varieties of ice-cream available in Japan. They're both great too!

Next stop was an onsen, which is a natural hot spring. Japan is volcanic (and is prone to earthquakes which makes it a big disaster area really!) so there's loads of these natural hot springs all over Japan.
This one was particularly cool. It was half way up a mountain in a beautiful scenic valley covered by forrest.
We arrived at the reception and had to get a lift up to the onsen. And of course, Japan being a big ball of craziness, the 'lift' was actually a garden shed on a conveyor belt! So we all crowded in to this garden shed which trundled up the mountain and deposited us at the onsen.
Before getting into an onsen you have to strip off and scrub yourself with soap so as to keep the onsen water clean. It was a little weird getting naked with a bunch of guys and hanging out in a naturally heated rock pool up a mountain but sometimes you just have to do these things! The view from the onsen was fantastic. It was a lovely sunny day and we were soaking in naturally heated water overlooking a beautiful valley. Kick ass all round!

That night when we got back we headed to Fukuyama, a city only 10 minutes away by train, had a meal and went drinking. It was an absolutely kick as day!

We've got a few days off over the next few weeks so I'll probably be heading to Hiroshima and Osaka for a bit. I'll let you know!