theurbancity

Tohoku Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

The Tohoku-Region Pacific Ocean Offshore Earthquake (東北地方太平洋沖地震) is upgraded now to a magnitude 9.0. That’s basically twice as strong as 8.9… not just 0.1-more stronger. My friends say it’s the strongest earthquake they’ve felt… even my grandparents, all approaching 80 or 90, say it was the strongest. And they were hundreds of miles away from the epicenter in Tokyo and Kanagawa.

No matter how prepared a country is you can’t withstand tsunamis. I’m sure the breakwaters they built helped a bit but… Luckily, everyone is lining up to buy stores in affected areas, no looting, no stealing, and store owners are giving away things like phone chargers, batteries, and some are selling items like cup noodles/ramen for cheap, like 5 for 100Yen when it normally costs 200YEN for 1. Even though Japanese can be perceived as cold to foreigners living there, when it comes to times like these, it’s pretty remarkable. My friend in Hawaii’s friend’s home got looted when she had to evacuate for the tsunami - what the hell?

Thank goodness the buildings held up - if you watch the tsunami videos, you can see all the buildings being washed away still standing, despite it being at the epicenter. I just saw a woman on the news talk about how she watched her neighbor’s daughter being washed away as they barely escaped the tsunami water.

There’s been a bunch of first hand account videos on YouTube.. here are some from YouTube. Sure you’ve seen the black flaming tsunamis engulfing entire towns. 

Look at around 0:30 - you see the ENTIRE parking lot just washed away as people inside watch.

The ground is literally breaking and moving apart.

At Tokyo Disneyland - people were trapped here because the parking lot flooded. Staff is performing while aftershocks occur.

Skyscrapers in Tokyo behaving like they should - absorbing the shock of the earthquake by swaying and redistributing the energy. Still scary though, but world’s strictest building codes, genius engineers and honest construction saved thousands and thousands of lives.

And this is hundreds of miles away from the epicenter near Sendai.

First hand account in Sendai - mother and son run outside.

Social networking is amazing - it’s how people have communicated. I had to e-mail my uncle in Tokyo to see if they were ok. My friends - I communicated through social networking sites like Facebook and mixi. Twitter is crazy too. I’m surprised at the world media’s reaction to the earthquake too - they are praising the people, preparedness, and honestly the reaction is a lot more genuine than I thought it would be…

But here are some Yahoo! Answers I saw that are ridiculous - they are funny because they are so stupid, but infuriating for the same reason.

Is Japan just unlucky with nuclear stuff or what?

If half of Japan underwater?

How much radiation will the USA get from Japan’s exploding nuclear plants?

Any Japanese hit hard that has the money to come to America?

Is it wrong that I think remember Pearl Harbor when I see the help Japan foundations?

Do you think the Ocean is angry at Japan?

Nuclear fears, body counts, families who can’t find each other because they don’t have a home to go back to, economic implications… this shit is real… but I think if any country is going to recover it’s Japan.