Japan M8.8 Earthquake / 東北地方での大地震

KONAMI's offices are fine, so presumably everyone is fine. I don't think anyone was in that region.
U1 and NAOKI are all right.

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I can't tell you how much of a relief that is to hear!

god

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Just a reminder that any people who are celebrating or claimed this disaster is a pay back for pearl harbor are the minority groups of people in the world that have the olden day mind set and never grow up. Just a bunch of naive people.... That is all I can say to those who are building their happiness on top of others misfortunes at the moment.

No one has even thought about such a thing in this forum, jch.

I know. I am not refering to the people here. However, the facebook posts have a lot of these comments. Even some of the chinese forums I read some of them are happier with this disaster and hoping all Japanese died instead... I really don't know why there are people who are so insensible towards others...

I think their jubilation is caused by their jealousy towards the Japanese

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I've been in Japan the last ten days, and it's been a very difficult time.

It took several hours for me to find out what was actually going on. I was staying in Osaka last week, and on a day out in Kyoto when the earthquake struck. The Kansai area didn't feel it, it's way too far west from Sendai to pick up the tremors even for something of this magnitude. The first indication that something wasn't right was on the train from Kyoto to Nara at around 5pm local time, when I happened to see that part of the Tokaido Shinkansen was suspended due to an earthquake and the rest was running on a severe delay. I think the suspension was as far as Nagoya. It was only on the way back from Nara that I happened to talk to an American doing missionary work who had heard of what the news was. I think even at this time, 8pm, that unless you had been glued to the internet or TV details were still pretty scarce.

We got to Tokyo Saturday, only finding out that we were being advised not to after we'd gone. I think we've felt three aftershocks, one yesterday morning the most violent. It's been difficult even this far away from Sendai. The biggest concern for Tokyo directly is electricity. The hotel we're staying has already had one enforced blackout of three hours. Very few escalators are in operation, and many businesses have shut both due to risk of aftershocks and to conserve electricity and gas. Although the local supermarket is well-stocked, mini-marts like Seven Eleven and Family Mart have had chronic shortages of perishables. Anything which helps saves supplies of energy, food, oils and petrol is being considered. Emergency blood donation centres are being set up at the moment as well, which may become more of an issue if radioactivity at Fukushima gets worse.

As a tourist, there's not a lot we can do; the last two days have been journeys to closed places. We try to keep out of the Metro system as much as possible even an hour outside normal peak times, as what services are running are chronically overcrowded. Generally people are trying to get on with life as much as possible. There's little point in us trying to get home early, as plane tickets are astronomically expensive (more than even our insurance covers us for) and assumes you can even get to the airports.

Not helped by the fact my Japanese is quite bad, there isn't much information I can pass on that isn't already available fourth-hand. The odd TV station had only in the last day or so moved away from 24/7 coverage. There is growing concern about the risk of a meltdown at Fukushima, as two or three times a day there seems to be a new reason to have extra concerns. I know that those who aren't yet in the evacuation zone are being told to keep their houses airtight, and no food or drink comes in or out the area. Some people in Tokyo are moving south and west away from the city as a pre-emptive measure. The advice we've got is that there's no risk to the capital, but given the news I wouldn't be surprised if the exclusion zone grows further.

There is no real comparison for the UK for something of this scale, not even knocking out Newcastle and Hull matches it. Sendai has been decimated, in an even stronger way that New Orleans was when hit by Hurricaine Katrina. But I don't get a sense of pity over here. It's more a feeling that now this has happened, the priority is to get things moving again as soon as possible not only to restore order to the country, but also help the grieving of those with friends and family in the affected areas.

I actually read that comments (the payback thing) not just in chinese forums but South Korean and American ( a minority) too.

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Believe it or not (not that I'm supporting such feelings considering this happened over 60 years ago), many other east Asian countries still hold very bitter feelings towards the Japanese from WW2. Sure the US had Pearl Harbor (which quite frankly could have been ALOT worse) but how the Japanese treated those who they conquered was perhaps even more brutal and barbaric than anything the Russians or Nazis did, if not much less organized. A great film documentary on this is Nanking which really captures the sense of despair of the Chinese who were conquered.

Ironically, if these posters are from mainland China (not Hong Kong, or Taiwan who are also Chinese), I could understand how the centralized government could use cultural hatred towards japan in order to create a sense of national unity through opposition, even if they are economically co-dependent and the Chinese government is utilizing whichever means to help their economic partner.

Some North American forums that still hold grudges on Japan talks about what the Japanese did to Pearl Harbor which leads to:
blah...blah...blah, serves them right because of what they did to us... etc,etc

Which is so irritating if you ask me

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Well... History will still need to be learn and facts would never be forgotten. I know there are events (ie. pearl harbour) that have been affected one races or nation which leaded to unforgetable memories for those who survived and those who lost their loved ones. However, people should actually be feeling sorry to the people in need or suffer from the disaster, help as much as they can. This is a common curtousy of being a human... Further more as you have mentioned that this are already happened way long ago. People should learn the mistakes the ancestors caused and not repeating the history itself...

Yeah, because in the US nuking them twice apparently wasn't payback.

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I still can't believe that Japan easily coped up with this triple disaster

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Japan is situated in a tectonic region which have frequest earthquakes and they are more or less accustomed to it. Just that this time it is somewhat more than what they expected...

If I was with those haters on facebook... I could talk about the Death March and that their 3 years is darker than the 333 years and the 33 years we had. But I'm not, so I won't.

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People like that seriously just make me want to move out of America entirely. I don't want to be associated with morons who fail to realize the Japanese people of today are from a completely different generation than the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbor. Really, the only person who deserves "payback" for Pearl Harbor is Michael Bay.

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Death toll of the Pearl Harbor Bombings - about 2,403 Americans (mostly military)
Death toll of the Tokyo firebombings + Hiroshima/Nagasaki nukes - about 300,000 Japanese (mostly civilians)



Yeah, Japan owes the US big for Pearl Harbor don't they?

It's not even worth justifying these morons with a retort.

Not related to the Japan earthquake but this is another stupid racism video and it has been reposted hundred times in YT...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7XAJo3rQn8&feature=related

This is exactly why the education system (every country) today is somewhat failing to teach them (and those who says the payback comments) basic manners...