I heard a little scary warning sounds from TV and my mobile at around 12:40 p.m. today. The TV said the warning was issued to northern Japan including Niigata Prefecture where I live in now. But within ten minutes, I received another message on the mobile, which canceled the warning. I was relieved and started afternoon things.
I saw part of press briefing by Japan meteorological agency in the afternoon, and got to know that the agency had predicted Magnitude of 9.9. It was quite a large number because 9.5 of the Chile Earthquake in 1960 was the largest ever recorded.
When the prediction was not right. like a warning was issued but nothing happened, this is called “swing and a miss” as a metaphor from baseball (Karaburi in Japanese). In my view, a warning of “swing and a miss” is better than a disaster without warning. But an expert is saying that people tend to expect nothing will happen if erroneous warning had repeated.
I hope the warning system get improved so that an exact warning would be issued for the safety of Japanese people.
