Tai Hei You Okina Jishin to Tsunami.
Pacifc Ocean Large Earthquake and Tsunami.
The S.O. has been assured by several e-mails / Facebook posts that her family is safe-although she has been unable to talk to her mother in Fukushima. We’ve been in electronic e-mail contact with her sister and her niece. The phones in Fukushima seem to be out.
The S.O. spent a good deal of her youth in Sendai where this video of the quake was taken. 8.9 means one hell of a jolt:
The Atlantic has 48 pictures here. The refinery in Chiba is visibile from the S.O.’s apartment. We used to see it across Tokyo Bay when we first started seeing each other I started going to see her at her place.
I have a good friend-his wife is Japanese and she was supposed to go to the United States this weekend. As of last communication she had gotten to her family’s house and was trying to figure out how to get back to her home in Kanagawa. She spent 8+ hours trapped at Narita airport. Another friend was coming back from Korea and picked the wrong day to change planes at Narita.
I showed the S.O. how to stream NHK video so that she can watch the news about the quake in her own language. I’ve shown her this before-until today she expressed no interest in it. If you want to watch NHK streaming on the internet, go here.
The S.O.’s family lives in Fukushima Prefecture-but on high ground in the mountains. Still it would be nice to know if her mother has power.
This is all very bad-but then again, this is Japan. They learned a lot from the Kobe Earthquake-and made their building codes stronger. Other nations could learn a lot from their example.
Evidently -according to the NHK live broadcast, Shinkansen service is starting up. That, to me, is simply amazing. What a strong and resilient country!