The Japan Times Online
The big news of the day is the Earthquake... and yes mom, I'm fine! This one appears to have hit all the major papers worldwide... well, it would seeing as it was a 8.0 one. Some of my coworkers claimed to have felt it this morning here in Tokyo, which is about 900 km away. There were also quite a few minor tremblers today in the Tokyo area - nothing compared to the 7 and 6 magnitude aftershocks felt up in Hokkaido. I was shocked at how little damage was caused - Kobe is The Earthquake on record. It was only a 7.3 and the damage was incredible. The 1923 earthquake in Tokyo killed 140,000 people - and that was also only in the 7's in terms of magnitude. That of course is mildly misleading - apparently most of those people were killed by the subsequent fires that broke out, and quick spread throughout the city.

Anyway, today I have been learning about tsunami. I've always thought that tsumani were giant 1 mile high waves that came crashing miles inland. I was reading the news reports about 1 meter high tsunami, thinking "uh... so what??" Well those suckers are fast! They have had some really interesting footage on tv. One clip showed a pier basically being submerged in less than a minute as the water rose shortly after the quake. There was another clip of the tsunami moving up a river - basically flowing backwards. And the one that really gave an indication of how strong they are was a boat that was churning up water it was powering the engines so much, and yet it appeared to not be moving. It was going into the tsunami.

So, thank heavens there was only 1 death and mostly minor injuries. And another day has passed in Japan, and I have yet again learned something new and had my perceptions alterred. A mile high wave would be kinda cool to see though.