Update On Us and Our Area

First of all, thank you very much for your kinds words and concern about us. I really appreciate it. Secondly I am sorry for not replying...

We are doing fine. None of our family members are dead or injured. Due to the unprecedented shaking that took place on March 11, we had a minor damage at home (as you can see photo above), located in Utsunomiya city, Tochigi Prefecture. But it's nothing comparative to what happened to the coastal area of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures.

As it is constantly reported on all sorts of media, one of our main concerns is the radioactivity leakage from the Fukushima #1 nuclear power plant. Fortunately we are not within 20 km of the power station that is in critical situation of cooling down the nuclear reactor. It is fortunate that Onagawa nuclear power plant near Sendai city is still under control! It's so nearby the epicenter.

Since where we live is so far away from the Pacific coast, our lives are OK. As you can see in the photo shown above, we have had very minor damage caused by the quake. In some area of our city, we have problems with electricity and telephone services. The majority of JR trains lines are still out of service. Gasoline supply has been out of service since yesterday and this is probably the biggest issue for most of the inhabitants in our prefecture since driving a car is indispensable. More and more shelves at supermarkets are getting bare, as well.
Other than that, our area is so quiet. I haven't heard any ambulance sirens since yesterday. The people here appear to be saving gasoline. The streets are not so busy. Rather, it's so quiet, I have to say. We posted photos of our neighborhood on another one of our blogs, Tochigi Daily Photo, here.

Here is the funny part. Did I tell you that we don't have a TV and radio at home? We totally rely on the internet for getting updates and we have been listening to the BBC live video, as well as reloading Japanese newspaper websites. Never before have I been exposed to such a massive flow of British accents. By the time everything's back to normal, I will be so familiar with many varieties of British accents!

What we are really worrying about is the aftershocks that are continuously happening. I feel like living in an airplane cabin or on a train all day...

Fig. 1 Everything started at the time when the red bar was recorded. Gray bars indicate quakes that happened before the major disaster. The Y axis denotes the numbers of aftershocks per hour and the X axis indicates time.

This is all written in Japanese, but just take a look at the times that the aftershocks happen. You can see how often it's been happening. It IS gradually getting less and less as the time goes by. Which is good news!

However....

Fig 2. Average magnitude of aftershocks. The red bar reached at magnitude 9 that is the biggest number ever recorded in Japan. Y axis indicates average magnitude of aftershocks per hour. Gray bars denote quakes that happened before the major disaster.

The average magnitude, unfortunately, remains high... The data does not make me happy...


This is a Black and White Weekend and Weekend Reflections #77,