Feature: Tokyoites fear doomsday-like disasters likely harbinger of nature's real wrath

With doomsday-like scenes plaguing Japan over the past few days following devastating floods in Joso City in Ibaraki Prefecture which washed hundreds of homes away, a rattling earthquake in Tokyo Bay which rocked the capital and yet another volcano erupting Monday, experts and citizens alike are bracing themselves for more of nature's fury.

Located on the Pacific Ring of Fire and being the most seismically active region in the world, Japan is no stranger to volcanoes blowing their tops and earthquakes shaking the foundations of homes. But of late, the increasing frequency of such occurrences, coupled with the unprecedented ferocity of this year's typhoon season, is leading many to fear that this is all leading to an Armageddon-like conclusion.

Despite being located just 50 km north of Tokyo, a capital city known globally for its modern conveniences and technology, Joso City, home to 65,000 people, saw cataclysmic scenes in the wake of Typhoon Etau sweeping through Japan's eastern seaboard.

Thousands were eventually forced to evacuate on Friday and Saturday last week as a hoard of rescue services battled the elements to save lives, as the torrents of floodwater sought to wash them away.

Many people here have said that the scenes in Joso, and to a lesser extent further north in Miyagi Prefecture where a sizable river, as in Joso, also burst its banks and flooded the neighboring area, were reminiscent of the hellish spectacle in March 2011, when a megathrust earthquake struck just east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tohoku, bringing forth a killer tsunami with waves topping 40 meters which devoured the lives of almost 16,000 people.

Not content with washing away lives, homes and businesses, the tsunami surged inland and utterly pummeled a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, leading to the worst commercial nuclear disaster in history, that has yet to be brought under control and was exacerbated further as torrential rain caused further radioactive flooding at the plant last week, with hundreds of tons of toxic water, once again, flowing freely into the Pacific Ocean.

"I just wonder what's coming next. It seems as though every other day brings a new natural disaster in between spells of beautiful sunny weather. It's as if the gods are teasing us; as soon as we relax, or are sleeping soundly, we're hit by deadly typhoons, shaken awake by earthquakes with epicenters just kilometers from where we live, or forced to evacuate as volcanoes, which have been largely dormant for years, suddenly erupt," Shinichi Mori, a 38-year old export manager for JFE Shoji Trade Corp., told Xinhua.

"All this reminds me of the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow', except this is real, too real," Mori said, adding that following the trembler which struck in the heart of Tokyo Bay in the early hours of Saturday morning, registering 5.3 on Japan's seismic scale, he had equipped his household with emergency supplies and tools and was taking the impending sense of a further calamity " very seriously".

But while typhoons' courses and ferocity can be charted well in advance thanks to satellite technology and equipment used to monitor volcanic activity has become far more advanced in recent years, meaning the weather agency here can issue advisories to residents and tourists to evacuate from active peaks like that of Mount Aso on Japan's main southern island of Kyushu, as was done Monday, ahead of fatal eruptions, such predictive methodologies are still fallible, as highlighted by the sudden eruption of Mount Ontake in central Japan in 2014, which killed 63 people.

"Typhoons can change course in the blink of an eye and last year's eruption of Mount Ontake proves that predicting when volcanoes will erupt is not yet an exact science, and, as for earthquakes, well they are the worst nightmare of all, and can and will strike without warning," said 72-year old retiree Shingo Matsubara.

"I've lived here in Sangenjaya all my life and while some of the town is quite modern, if you wander away from the main highway, you'll see our generation live in wooden houses that we built ourselves. Of course we don't want to leave, but every time an earthquake strikes, we wonder if the beams will hold up; whether the roof will crack and fall, or if our beloved homes will finally give up and crumble under the force of Mother Nature," Matsubara said.

He went on to say that Tokyo was longer overdue a colossal earthquake and that Saturday's quake was a reminder that it was on its way and when it hits will likely be of a similar magnitude to the Tohohu quake or the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which took the lives of some 140,000 people and also saw a huge tsunami hit, as both fire and water conspired to devour, devastate and destroy the capital.

While fear levels rise across the nation, commensurate with the rising frequency of natural disasters here, experts too believe that what have been perceived by millions on this island nation of late as doomsday warnings, may indeed hold some scientific weight.

Masaaki Kimura, an Emeritus Professor of submarine geology and a seismologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa Prefecture, and one of the nation's most respected seismologists of late, correctly predicted the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, based on his own scientific enquiry and the frequency of what he describes as "earthquake eyes", referring to zones previously unaffected by earthquakes which see a sudden rise in the build up of smaller quakes.

Along with Kimura, who warned the Pacific Science Congress in Japan that the Tohoku quake would occur four years before it did, astronomer Yoshio Kushida also believes that Japan is in store for another major earthquake imminently.

According to Kimura's studies, an earthquake of a magnitude similar to the 2011 Tohoku quake will strike in 2017 with its epicenter, while not directly in Tokyo, very near in the Izu Islands -- a volcanic island chain governed by Tokyo, which stretches south from the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture.

"I think the bizarre weather and unprecedented number of natural disasters this year and the recent intensity and variety of such disasters is a clear message that nature is going to hit us with something very big, very soon and it's most likely to be an earthquake," Mori said.

"It's not a question of if, it's a question of when it's going to happen," he concluded somewhat prophetically and visibly nervously. Endi