Tokyo earthquakes: your address has an evacuation site

A 60-day guest in a Nakano apartment already has an evacuation site. Nobody told them, and that is the normal outcome. You did not file a 転入届 (tennyū todoke — the moving-in notification) at the ward office, so you are not on the 住民基本台帳 (jūmin kihon daichō — the resident register that ward services run on). Your operator (the company that runs the furnished apartment) handled the apartment and probably never mentioned the ward at all.

The evacuation assignment does not run on that register. It runs on the address. Meguro puts the rule in one line: 「地区内残留地区を除き、原則として住所により避難先が指定されています」, your evacuation destination is designated by address. Tokyo splits the assignment by 町丁目 (chōchōme — town-block, the unit that gives you "Nakano 5-chōme"), and your building sits inside one. The table is public, the lookup takes about two minutes, and the answer is the same for you as for the household downstairs that moved in during 1994.

The register gates other things. Opening a bank account is the one you notice first. Safety is not on that list.

City, ward, building: the three assignments

Three levels publish disaster information for your address. They are not interchangeable, and in English the words look alike.

City. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government designates 避難場所 (hinan basho — wide-area refuge). These are large parks, school grounds, and housing-estate open space where you wait out a spreading fire. There were 221 of them across the 23 wards as of July 2022. The design rule is a walk of under 3km, with at least one square metre of space per person. The metro government publishes the assignment as 「23区別　町丁目別避難場所等一覧表」, the list of evacuation sites by ward and by town-block. That table is the artifact. Find your chōchōme on it.

Ward. Your 区役所 (kuyakusho — ward office) owns the other two. 一時集合場所 (ichiji shūgō basho — temporary assembly point) is the nearby park or school ground where neighbours gather first and wait for information. 避難所 (hinanjo — evacuation shelter) is where residents sleep when their building is no longer habitable. The metropolitan government counts about 3,200 hinanjo across Tokyo, with room for about 2.8 million people. Ōta states the allocation rule plainly: assembly points are set 「自治会、町会ごとに1箇所から数箇所」, one to several per neighbourhood association, and shelters are allocated 「自治会、町会単位で」, by neighbourhood association unit. A 町会 (chōkai) is a block of streets, not a club you join.

Building. Your operator publishes the building's own rules in the move-in handbook: the assembly point on the property, the stairwell to use, where the gas meter sits, the number that answers at 3am. Ask for the handbook if it is not in the apartment. Read the emergency page once, now, while nothing is happening.

Which building you go to depends on what happened

These all translate into something like "evacuation place," so guests use them interchangeably. They are four separate instructions.

• 一時集合場所 is where you gather first, outdoors, and wait to hear what happened.
• 避難場所 is where you go only if fire is spreading. Waiting out the fire is the entire function.
• 避難所 is where you sleep if your building cannot be lived in. Wards scope this one to their own residents. Shibuya defines it as 「家屋の倒壊や焼失などで被害を受けた渋谷区民の人が、一時的に生活する場所」, a place where Shibuya residents whose homes collapsed or burned live for a while.
• 帰宅困難者受入施設 (kitaku konnansha ukeire shisetsu — reception facility for people who cannot get home) is the one written for you. Shibuya again: 「帰宅困難者受入施設は、区民以外の方が一時的に避難するための施設です」, a facility for people who are not ward residents to shelter in temporarily.

That fourth line is the part guests miss. The system does have a slot for someone who is not on the register, and it is not the school gym. If the earthquake catches you in Shinjuku on a Tuesday afternoon and the trains stop, the reception facility is the building you look for.

If the apartment is standing, the water runs, and no fire is spreading, you stay in the apartment. That has a name: 在宅避難 (zaitaku hinan — sheltering at home). Meguro defines it as riding out the emergency at home when 「今いる場所に火災や爆発、建物の倒壊等の危険がなく、自宅で身の安全が確保され、引き続き住める場合」, meaning no fire, explosion, or collapse risk where you are, your safety at home is secure, and the place is still livable. Meguro also writes the line guests need most: 「避難所へ行くことだけが避難ではありません」. Going to a shelter is not the only form of evacuation.

The mistake is walking to a hinanjo with a suitcase because the shaking was frightening and the apartment is fine. If you have already done it, go home and stock the apartment instead. No shame, no scorn. The shelter is sized for people whose buildings failed.

Reading the number: shindo, not magnitude

Japanese alerts lead with 震度 (shindo). It is not magnitude. Magnitude is one number for the whole earthquake. Shindo is a meter reading at one point on the ground, and 気象庁 (Kishōchō — Japan Meteorological Agency, JMA) takes its values "using seismic intensity meters installed on the ground or on the first floor of low-rise buildings." The same earthquake gives Nakano one shindo and Adachi another.

The scale runs in ten steps: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-lower, 5-upper, 6-lower, 6-upper, 7. The two halves of 5 and 6 are 弱 (jaku — lower) and 強 (kyō — upper). Learn where 5-lower sits and you can leave the rest of the scale alone.

Here is why that step is the one to learn. JMA describes shindo 4 as "Most people are startled." Dishes rattle. Nothing needs doing. At 5-lower the description changes: "Many people are frightened and feel the need to hold onto something stable," and indoors, "Hanging objects such as lamps swing violently. Dishes in cupboards and items on bookshelves may fall."

5-lower is also the line the phone alert is built on. JMA issues the 緊急地震速報（警報） (kinkyū jishin sokuhō keihō — Earthquake Early Warning) when the predicted maximum shindo is 5-lower or higher, and the bulletin names both the areas expected to reach 5-lower and the areas expected to reach shindo 4. If your phone makes that sound, the system has predicted at least 5-lower somewhere and your area is on the list.

One step further, at 6-lower, JMA's description is "It is difficult to remain standing." You are not walking to a park at 6-lower. Anything you planned to do happens before the shaking or after it, never during. That is the whole argument for doing the lookup on a quiet afternoon.

The first ten seconds

東京消防庁 (Tōkyō Shōbōchō — Tokyo Fire Department) publishes the sequence as 「地震 その時10のポイント」, ten points for the moment of the earthquake. Four of them cover a guest in an apartment.

Get under something and stay there. 「丈夫なテーブルの下や、物が「落ちてこない」「倒れてこない」「移動してこない」空間に身を寄せ、揺れがおさまるまで様子を見る」: a solid table, or any space where nothing can fall, tip, or slide onto you, and wait until the shaking stops.

Do not run outside. 「瓦、窓ガラス、看板などが落ちてくるので外に飛び出さない」: roof tiles, window glass, and signs come down into the street. Inside a modern concrete building you are in the better place.

Leave the stove alone until it stops. 「火を使っている時は揺れがおさまってから、あわてずに火の始末をする」: deal with the flame after the shaking, calmly, not during it.

Then open the door. 「揺れがおさまった時に、避難ができるよう出口を確保する」: secure your exit once the shaking stops. Steel doors sit in a frame, and a frame that has shifted can hold the door shut. Open it and leave it open.

When the gas stops on its own

Your gas will probably cut out, and that is not a fault. Japanese meters shut the supply themselves. The Japan Gas Association: 「震度5相当以上の地震などの非常時には、ガスメーター(マイコンメーター)の安全装置が作動して、ガスを止めます」, meaning the safety device trips and stops the gas at shaking equivalent to shindo 5 or above. Tokyo Gas Network gives the same threshold, 「震度5程度以上の揺れを感知したり」, shaking of around shindo 5 or more.

Restoring it is a button, not a phone call. The meter usually sits in the corridor outside your door, in the entrance cupboard, or on the balcony.

1. Turn off every gas appliance in the apartment.
2. Turn the cap on the 復帰ボタン (fukki botan — reset button) to the left by hand and lift it off.
3. Press the button all the way in until the indicator light comes on, then release it slowly.
4. Wait about three minutes. The meter is testing for a leak: 「この間ガス漏れがないか確認していますので、ガスを使わないでください」. Do not use gas while it does.
5. When the red light stops blinking, the gas is back.

If you smell gas, do not press the button. Open a window, leave every switch alone, and call the emergency line in your operator's handbook.

What to carry in your head, not your bag

Bottled water and a flashlight are the easy part, and every guide says so. The part specific to a midterm stay is the paperwork you are not carrying.

Write the building's full address in Japanese and in roman letters on paper, and keep it in your wallet. Right now that address exists only in your phone, and phones run out of battery. Put the operator's 24-hour number and the building name on the same card. A 119 call in basic Japanese goes faster when you can read the address out instead of describing where you are.

Keep your 在留カード (zairyū card — residence card) or your passport on you. It is what you show at a shelter, and it is what proves who you are when the street is closed and you want back into the building.

Photograph the hinan basho and hinanjo pages before you need them. Mobile data slows after a large earthquake. A screenshot in the camera roll does not.

Before the next alert sounds

Open your ward's hazard map page and the metro list, and find your chōchōme. Write down the 一時集合場所 and the 避難場所 in Japanese, with the same names in roman letters underneath.

If your block comes back as 地区内残留地区 (chikunai zanryū chiku — stay-in-district area), that is an answer, not a blank. Meguro describes these as blocks where fireproofing has gone far enough that 「広域的な避難を要しない」, no wide-area evacuation is needed, and states plainly that 「地区内残留地区には広域避難場所が割り当てられていません」: no wide-area site is assigned to them. You stay in the district and skip that step.

Walk one route in daylight. The distance is under 3km by design, so the walk is short, but the corner you turn at looks different in the dark.

Find the gas meter and take the cap off the reset button once. Knowing which model you have costs nothing today.

Ask the operator for the move-in handbook and save the emergency number as a contact. Typhoon season starts in June and overlaps most stays, and the same number answers both.

Leave the phone alert switched on. It is loud, it will wake you, and it fires at a predicted 5-lower. That is the level worth being woken for.

Most stays of 30 to 90 days will feel something. Almost all of it will be shindo 3 or 4, and you will look up from your laptop and then go back to work. The lookup is for the other case, and it takes two minutes.