Earthquake!

When I was awoken to the sound of my apartment rumbling, my first reaction was to scream, "TERRORISTS!" and it suddenly dawned on me that the political reasoning behind attacking an unheard of Japanese town, sleepily situated between towering mountains would be a tad foolish. As my room continued to rattle, I surmised that I was experiencing my first earthquake. The only profound statements that passed through my lips as I experienced an earthquake for the first time was, "Cor blimey, it's very shaky."
The earthquake was the main topic of discussion amongst my students that day.
I commented that I was initially scared when I saw my pots and pans jump up and down with a life of their own.
Masaho, my Tuesday evening student, said, "You were scared?! WAA-hahahahah!"
"Well, Masaho, I have never experienced an earthquake. I'm not used to it," I said.
"But I am. And this earthquake was a kiddie’s earthquake. I have been through more terrible earthquakes than that."
What then emerged was a testosterone fuelled game whereby all the male students in the class tried to out-earthquake each other with the most violent, destructive tales of personal agony and woe. An extract of the class conversation went like this:
Yuki: "I was driving on the roads, when an earthquake happened, and it threw my car into the air."
Masayoshi: "I wasn't driving a car at the time. I was walking, and the earthquake threw me in the air."
Yuki: "It flipped my car upside down."
Masayoshi: "It flipped me upside down. Twice."
Whether or not these tales were true, it didn’t matter, it was entertaining. But I had to cut a brutal end to proceedings when Yoko stood up and portentously said, "Earthquakes are not here to amuse us. They can tear families apart," and she sat down with her head in her hands.
That effectively killed all earthquake related stories in the classroom.
Yoko, of course, was quite right to remonstrate with the goading students. Earthquakes are indeed a serious matter and it is essential to know what to do in the event of one.
When I was in the staffroom sipping English tea after teaching my kindergarten class, I saw one of the teachers rise out of his chair, walk over to a microphone and started to scrunch up pieces of paper as he transmitted this sound around the school. Before I asked one of the teachers if they had any spare straight-jackets in the staff room, the Headmistress chuckled as she saw my confused face and filled me in on the details. The man with the scrunched up papers was trying to make accurate earthquake sounds because the school were practising an earthquake drill. I didn't have the heart to say that it sounded more like a man scrunching up paper, but the sound had the desired effect because the whole school streamed out of the exits, including the teachers in the staff-room. In the case of an earthquake, it appeared that the kids were expected to wear big yellow pillows over their heads. They looked liked little pixies as they marched out onto the playground with their thick pointy hats. The sheer weight of this gargantuan hat caused many children to fold over backwards onto the floor. I questioned the logic of placing this cumbersome apparel on the top of their head in the event of an emergency. Surely one would have the inclination to be as spry as a rabbit and dive for cover and not to be prevented to move by a bloody big elf hat submerging your face.