Yokohama Navy Exchange was where?

This movie is Japanese. And Win silverlight.

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye4671874.html

Movie can see flash player. This is not silverlight.

Magnitude scale of quake is 9. The level of this is equal to the Sumatra quake. Aircraft carrier Ronaldo Reagan is taking an active part in the vicinity of the stricken area. It is delicate state though the Fukusima plant is controlled. The electric power is insufficient. Here will become a premeditated power failure from tomorrow (14th). This is English's web news.

http://www.asahi.com/english/

Kaoru
I have not been able to get any information on the "bullet" train that I heard was lost or missing. Also other trains are missing ? Do you have information ?

Peter

Shinkansen in the northern part is stoppage. And, old lines are not train service. I remember the picture of your Matsushima. The inn might have been lost...

There seem to be a lot of connections.

http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/index.html

The horrific video images of the recent earthquake have been distributed worldwide with lightening speed. This was not the case with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 that affected Yokohama. Here is a link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006...

Peter - in the latest pieces of the NY Times, which has been covering the earthquake thoroughly, I could only find: "....On Saturday morning, the JR rail company said that there were three trains missing in parts of two northern prefectures." and there has been no further news - so I presume that no one yet knows for sure what has happened to them.

The very big issue beyond the immediate suffering and needs of the people is the nuclear facilities. I read that several more are in great danger, and a couple have had a "partial meltdown." I understand that the great danger is that there is no way to control these reactors once the back-up cooling systems fail, and that is what seems to be happening. Several of our scientist friends fear that this may be a disaster on a par with the Chenobyl event in the Ukraine years ago which would be really terrible.

I understand that the great danger is that there is no way to control these reactors once the back-up cooling systems fail, and that is what seems to be happening.

While the backup pumps have failed, the current report is that they are manually pumping in water to cool the reactor, the core has been submerged, and the temperatures have stabilized.

Several of our scientist friends fear that this may be a disaster on a par with the Chenobyl event in the Ukraine years ago which would be really terrible.

Right now it is classified as a level 4 disaster (no immediate risk beyond the facility) by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Chernobyl was a level 7 event (the only 7 to date), and was compounded by so many design failures and errors of judgement and that the two may not really be comparable. At the very least, a disaster of the same scale seems highly unlikely.

Thanks for your clarification, and let's hope that you're right and that it will turn out okay.

But if I'm reading this correctly, we're far from a solution to this nuclear catastrophe, so we don't really know how it will end.

It seems like the manual cooling is not working sufficiently. The water turns to steam, which then has to vent, sending radioactive steam into the atmosphere. And because even this isn't working all that well, there has now been a second hydrogen explosion, this one at site 3, which according to IAEA is cooled down, which obviously isn't true.

For a current newspaper report that shows some of the complexity of the problem, see the following:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-r...

Prayers go out to the people of Japan. Livedtas a boy on West Bluff and on Sagiyama Ridge in 1965.

Unfortunately the situation is developing very quickly and at the moment all reactors at the plant have sustained damaged. It may be a small consolation that the reactors are housed in steel/concrete containment vessels (while Chernobyl had none), but we'll have to wait and see how effective they are. Let's hope that they will be able to successfully cool down the reactors quickly and that the amount of leaked radiation is minimal.

Where are the survivors staying? Are they being housed in school auditoriums, etc.? Fox News played a video of an elderly couple who were picking their way through the ruins and rubbish of the tsunami aftermath, trying to find their missing son. They would call out his name and pause to see if there was an answer, then they would continue on through the wreckage, shifting rafters and pieces of metal siding, and calling out his name again. It was heart-wrenching.

Most of them take shelter in the school hall. As for the refuge of a big scale, food and water have already been distributed. The refuge of the few people in the interior has become poor. In the northern part, it is cold. Kerosene and the gasoline of the heater are very insufficient.

About 420,000 people are taking shelter there. As for the northern part, it worries from yesterday about elderly persons' hypothermia because the temperature fell on below zero.

The government is are planning the construction of the temporary shelter. I hope for those immediate construction. The nuclear reactor is drained water off and being cooled now. But, it is delicate state.

As Wally mentions, we are hearing about the terrible hardship in many north-eastern areas that were hit so badly, and the brave, patient behavior of the Japanese.

We read also that some people are nervous about the rising radiation levels in the air in Tokyo, and many are leaving the city.

Is this true in Yokohama also? Do you feel safe there? Are you able to get the food and other supplies you need?

Are all the trains running again? Is life getting back more to normal in some other ways?

We all hope you are not experiencing much personal hardship.

There was worry to which the massive power outage occurred in the metropolitan area.

There is no danger of the large quake or the radioactivity in the metropolitan area.

Foreigners in the living in Japan are taking shelter to the homecoming or the west. The level of the radioactivity of Yokohama is extremely low. The reactor core is cooled by the water cannon car in Fukusima plant now. Whether it is surely effective is not understood. Because Fukushima is far from the metropolitan area, I think that the influence by it is a little. Gasoline is insufficient here. The supply to the stricken area is priority. The store of preserves in the supermarket is insufficient. The frozen food and rice and bread. Present evacuees are 330,000 people. It snows and it worries about the northern part because it is cold. Accurate information on the stricken area cannot be heard. Anyway, Tokyo and Yokohama are safe now.

There is no level of the harmful radiation now healthy here. A few aftershocks happen.

Thank you for the update.
I hope that I speak for all of us in wishing you and your family will be safe and well dispite this very bad event.

Do you have a plan to move south if raidiation levels get worse in Yokohama ?

Do you think that you might have to evacuate ?

Peter-san

If the cooling work of a present reactor core fails and a high density radiation comes to Yokohama, we will take shelter. I talk with my wife because my family doesn't have the relative in the west.
This is the worst event in my life of 51 years. The evacuee in the northern part was changed by 390,000 people. The government and the local government cannot understand the number of people of an accurate victim and evacuee. The nuclear power generation plant of Fukusima is an old model...

Thank you,

All,

I have been on a road trip to rural Virginia and unable to get online. Oddly, I was up there planting sakura on my land when the news of the earthquake and tsunami started hitting the airwaves. Thankfully our family and friends in the Kanto area are safe but all are shaken and concerned about the ongoing situation. We are now seriously thinking of bringing my wife's mother and our sister-in-law here to Alabama.
I am unsure now of our planned trip over there in May.
I am so proud of the outpouring of support that I have seen coming from the US.
Please keep your thoughts and prayers rising to heaven for the Japanese people.
Tracy

I think everyone who has relatives in Japan, should bring them to the U.S. for a few months vacation. It would give them a nice break from the events going on in Japan, and may even take a little pressure off the situation there.