This is a good opportunity so I'm gonna post what I, a native-born Japanese, have been always thinking: This country is literally shaped by earthquakes. This is true not only in a geological sense but it also applies to the culture. Earthquakes affect how all the buildings here are made, the way of transportation, and virtually every aspect of our daily life. We always fear them and talk about them, but we're kinda resigned to accept the fate. This concept of resignation is seen in many ways in the Japanese culture. But it's also earthquakes that make us truly united. I realized this when the big quake hit the country five years ago. As much as we hate them, we are defined by earthquakes.
Similar to the Netherlands, where almost 2/3 of the country's inhabitants live below sea level. We are defined by our relationship to the sea, and you can see how that's related in how we build our cities and farm our land. It's also seen in our tolerance to views/perspectives different to our own - how petty do our differences seem when the sea is indifferent to our squabbles?
Something that's missing there: don't use elevators during or immediately after a quake.
IMO the single most important thing is: when you're at the beach or close to the coast at sea level make sure you know where the nearest evacuation area is.
It is very unlikely that you'll see an earthquake that is strong enough to be dangerous. Japanese buildings are very resilient. Even this rather strong quake has caused only minimal damage.
First of all don't worry. Even if you see large death and injury tolls, the percentage of people injured or killed is surprisingly small. Economically and socially, it is a huge burden, but the vast majority of people in Japan experience large earth quakes with no physical injury.
A couple of key points (anyone who knows better, please correct me!): if an earthquake strikes, don't panic. Just stay where you are. Trying to walk -- especially trying to go down stairs while the earthquake is happening -- can cause serious injury. Wait until everything stops shaking (usually a few seconds, but can potentially last up to a minute for a huge earthquake.). If you are near large, unsecured furniture, it might be better to edge yourself away. Many people get killed by bookshelves falling on them. All hotels I've been to in Japan have had furniture affixed to the walls, so you are pretty safe in a hotel.
Next if you are inside a house, after the shaking (in this order) turn off the gas shut off and open the doors. If you are in a safe place, don't leave. Fill your bathtub with water, in case the water shuts off. Check the news on TV or radio for further instructions. There will also be an announcement over the public speaker system, but it will be in Japanese only. If you are in a hotel, ask for assistance.
In the case that there is a tsunami warning, evacuate to high ground. These days there are signs in every neighbourhood denoting the height above sea level. While you are walking around, keep note of them. In low lying areas, there will be tsunami evacuation centres. Keep an eye out for them -- they can be normal apartment buildings. There is a sign on the door (usually in English too).
If you are outdoors when an earthquake strikes, again, wait until it has stopped shaking. HOWEVER: note your surroundings. If you are next to a brick building or large glass windows, etc, pay extra attention for falling debris. After the shaking has stopped, try to find a space away from buildings and telephone poles (hard to do in the city, but...) Wait for further instructions.
By and large, you can simply follow what other people are doing and it will most probably be fine. We have earthquake drills in my home town something like every month and people know what to do.
In any case, you are tremendously unlikely to encounter a really large earthquake while you visit. I've been here for about 8 years now and I've only experienced 1 really big one. We get several small ones from time to time, so you have a decent chance of experiencing those -- they are surprising, but you don't have to worry about them. Generally speaking, if you are still able to stand and walk while an earthquake is happening, then there is virtually no chance of injury in Japan. If you get thrown to the ground or literally couldn't take a step if you tried, then it's very, very serious.
That really isn't that out of the ordinary. Areas that are particularly susceptible to wildfires tend to have a constant pervading theme of understanding your home can be turned to cinders. Coastal areas have flooding and, depending on the region, hurricanes. And so forth.
It is a fundamental part of the human condition. People who live in places where people probably shouldn't either leave or get used to it.
A big tsunami like that happens about once every 500 years. It the life of the nuclear plant is 50 years, the risk of a disaster happening was 1/10. I don't think that this was an acceptable risk. Even a risk of 1/100 or 1/1000 would be unacceptable.
That means that the nuclear plant should have never been there, or should have been prepared to be run over by a tsunami...
Or the walls 1m taller, or build it underground, or not build it at all. But it does not make sense to build a nuclear plant saying "yes, well, maybe it will be ok"!
Wasn't the problem that the power mains coming in to the station got cut? Apparently the power station needs external power feeds to maintain the control machinery?
Accroding to the USGS's page (linked to by civilian), the earthquake was a strike-slip earthquake, where two blocks of crust slide laterally relative to eachother on a vertical fault, with no real uplift of subsidence of the seafloor. It's unlikely that there will be a major tsunami, as these are caused by rapid displacement of lots of water by the seafloor. However, given the right topography along the fault, it is possible.
When the Japan Meteorological Agency issues a tsunami warning, do not disregard it thinking you've got a better handle on the factors in play. The Japanese have their country monitored thoroughly and take disaster preparedness more seriously than anything I've seen in the US.
The JMA is top notch, no argument here. I didn't 'disregard' their warning, I just made a claim that the tsunami was unlikely to be major. This probably wasn't evident when the JMA's warning was made because it takes a while for the seismic waves to reach a broad-enough distribution of stations to confidently determine the type of earthquake.
In reply to many of the comments about tsunami height: A 1-2 m tsunami is a moderate tsunami, not a major tsunami. It can be very damaging to coastal infrastructure depending on the tide, the incidence angle of the waves, and other local factors, but it's simply not in the same magnitude as the major tsunamis that accompany M8+ subduction zone earthquakes.
Also, the measured amplitude of a tsunami will vary locally depending on the distance from the source and the geometry of the submarine topography: some areas focus the waves and the tsunami will be much higher, while some areas can spread the tsunami waves out. It's very similar to how a sound may be louder or quieter based on how far one is from the source of the sound and what's in between (walls of certain orientations, trees, etc.).
Initial predictions had wave height of 3m. That's high enough to wash a person away were they to stay on the seaside. I would suggest that JMA information be a primary reference in the early hours after a Japan natural disaster instead of the USGS. They have a better handle on event measurements and worst case predictions than the USGS will.
Thankfully your assessment turned out to be more in line with observation.
Just note here so that people unfamiliar of tsunamis won't get misconception. 50cm of tsunami is enough to wash people away. It's totally different from 50cm-high wave[1]. 1m of tsunami is deadly if you got swallowed. 3m can easily sweep two-story houses.
I was in Tokyo at my hotel when it happened. I thought maybe I had a Japanese vibrating bed for an alarm clock before realizing what was happening. I was on the 7th floor of a hotel and there was a slight sway for about 45 seconds. Given the duration I assumed it was fairly sizeabke but far away.
John Joseph Houghtaling (pronounced HUFF-tay-ling;[1] November 14, 1916 – June 17, 2009[1]) was an American entrepreneur and inventor who in 1958 invented the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, a common feature in mid-priced hotels and motels from the 1960s to the early 1980s.
(Well, maybe they are Japanese, now, haha).
The Japanese invented massage chairs some years before this, though, and a vibrating bed might be regarded as a derivative thereof:
Robotic massage chairs were first brought to market in 1954 by the Family Fujiryoki company.
It's funny how our attitudes change depending on the location. In Japan a vibrating bed is seen as technological sophistication, in America it's old and tacky.
Japanese electronics (especially in the boom years of the 80's and early 90's) have a certain 'Technology for Technology's Sake' design sensibility among them.
I experienced my first earthquake in Japan. I was sleeping with the window open and had a bag hanging on a nearby shelf. I woke up and the wind was blowing, and the bag was shaking. But as I woke up more, I realized that the wind wouldn't really move the heavy bag like that, and then realized that it was the building that was moving and the bag was mostly remaining still.
Rather soothing actually. I always enjoy flights where there are some turbulence; helps me sleep better.
The same thing happened to me. My thoughts: "I don't understand why this bed is shaking. Does this Japanese bed have some sort of massage mode that got triggered somehow? Silly me, if it had a massage mode, I would have noticed electronics somewhere. The people downstairs must be doing something. Ok, back to sleep."
"THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER HAS ISSUED A TSUNAMI THREAT MESSAGE FOR OTHER PARTS OF THE PACIFIC LOCATED CLOSER TO THE EARTHQUAKE. HOWEVER... BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII."
Not sure why the downvotes on this one. It's probably good news for the people in Hawaii, and for those of us who have friends/family there, that there is no threat.
I have been watching this (through their great Apple TV fourth gen app) for the past hour.
They have been excellent at doing live-translations of the primary NHK domestic broadcast. About 45 minutes ago the tone of the japanese language speaker in the background was really, really emotional, loud and fast. Reports of tsunami sightings at various distances from the seaside, factory fires etc were coming in by the minute.
They are warning people of returning to the seaside too early; now warning of a possible ~90 cm tsunami that might still be very strong.
Edit: Prime minister Abe made a brief, live speech to the nation.. and the NHK put him in a small picture-in-picture box in the lower left part of the screen so that they could still show the live view of the seaside. That was special.
I've read that NHK news presenters are also trained to use emotional language/tone in this kind of emergency, so that people would pay a better attention.
There was a significant revision of emergency response in Japan in the past five years.
>In the U.S. news presenters use hyperbolic language and an upset tone about everything.
What? No they don't. You may be confusing news presenters with some parody of the same, or with people like Bill O'Reilly, who are not news presenters, but commentators.
American news presenters, like news presenters almost everywhere, are trained to avoid hyperbole and emotional tone. Although admittedly, the line between news and commentary is getting purposely blurred because news is boring and opinion is engaging.
Now North Korea - they do "hyperbolic language and an upset tone about everything."
I was also quite amazed to see that they have closed captions for the simultaneous translation of their live domestic broadcast. Besides the sheer logistics of it, I didn't even know that you could do that with HTML video.
It's an HLS video, which comes in the form of a text manifest file (.m3u8). The manifest file can define subtitle segments (.vtt, 608, 708) in addition to video segments (.ts) - it's the job of the video player to stitch these together to play at the same time. Safari & Edge have their own HLS implementations but every other browser uses a third party library. Server-side transcoding is responsible for making these manifest files from video & subtitle files.
Interesting, thanks! I had a quick peek at the developer tools but didn't delve more deeply. I assume (from the fact that it was live TV) that all of this can be done just in time as well and that the stream of captions is sent along with the video stream.
Oops, may have been. I wasn't paying full attention to the TV at the time, just heard the english translator say "something something prime minister Abe something live statement something something" and then saw a small box with a Japanese man of approximately the right age speaking.
ESTIMATED TIMES OF ARRIVAL
--------------------------
* ESTIMATED TIMES OF ARRIVAL -ETA- OF THE INITIAL TSUNAMI WAVE
FOR PLACES WITHIN THREATENED REGIONS ARE GIVEN BELOW. ACTUAL
ARRIVAL TIMES MAY DIFFER AND THE INITIAL WAVE MAY NOT BE THE
LARGEST. A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF WAVES AND THE TIME BETWEEN
WAVES CAN BE FIVE MINUTES TO ONE HOUR.
LOCATION REGION COORDINATES ETA(UTC)
------------------------------------------------------------
KATSUURA JAPAN 35.1N 140.3E 2150 11/21
KUSHIRO JAPAN 42.9N 144.3E 2217 11/21
HACHINOHE JAPAN 40.5N 141.5E 2236 11/21
SHIMIZU JAPAN 32.8N 133.0E 2312 11/21
NOBEOKA JAPAN 32.5N 131.8E 2319 11/21
So, Katsuura was just hit, and the other cities will be hit soon.
Worryingly, TEPCO is reporting that the cooling system for the 3rd reactor at Fukushima Daiichi has stopped (via the NHK live TV stream)... Supposedly there is enough water in the pool that it will not be dangerous for quite awhile, but this needs to get fixed soon.
A week, they just said, I think. That seems manageable. The cooling system stopped operating because of the odd water movements, but wasn't reported to be damaged.
"TEPCO expects the cooling system to operate normally in 1-2 hours from now."
The livestream is talking about how 2 methods of water cooling at the Fukushima power plant, but there's no immediate danger because of some third system. Anybody have more details on this?
"Right now the water temperature is 27 degrees and the water temperature will not rise to dangerous levels... for a while."
I have a Japanese friend who said whenever a quake in NZ hits, the whole of Japan is on edge for the next month because Japan quakes often follow NZ quakes after a couple of weeks.
It seems to have happened again. I wonder why you don't hear anything in scientific circles about this.
It might be that the scientific circles have more data (that is, those of us in Japan only really notice the big ones and the local ones) that show that there isn't really a correlation at all due to the frequency of quakes in both areas.
Everytime something important happens I notice reddit is a better source of getting an aggregate of information than twitter or (sometimes) news outlets.
I found that for the New Zealand earthquakes last week, that Twitter was a better source than Reddit for information that was actually relevant to me as a local.
I was woken up by the quake this morning. Pretty strong feeling; it shook for a good few minutes. As far as I can tell everyone's safe in Tokyo, though the trains are a bit delayed and the elevators in my building weren't running.
Stronger by far than any quake I've ever felt in 8 years in San Francisco.
Reading the news article, it says that the waves are about 1m in height, some are about 60cm in height. How do they distinguish that these waves are caused by the earthquake and not waves created by other causes (ocean currents, wind etc)?
"Major world events are pretty much always on topic. We just don't need minor regular news events here."
Sure, it fits, but HN is a notoriously inferior general news site.
If you heard about this first here, you're ill informed.
If this was your only source for this news, you're VERY ill informed.
It's a shame, HN first descended into being basically just a Reddit Subreddit hosted on a differently URL, and is now morphing into reddit.com/r/reddit.com (the anything-goes general reddit subreddit) with a slightly more technical audience.
Considering that the most useful link/comment in this thread is a link to a vastly superior, just incomparably more useful and informing reddit link, I think the point is made quite nicely.
Oh well, I guess HN is a wrapper around Reddit these days.
Hacker news is a global community and this affects developers and enthusiasts in Japan which may directly or indirectly affect everyone in this community.
..and for those that don't, probably a large majority of Hacker News readers live in an earthquake-prone region and worry about whether they're prepared for the next time a significant earthquake is going to happen to them.
I don't - but I have friends who do. I found out about the earthquake through HN and was able to contact my friends and see if they were safe.
I'm aware of the warning sirens. I spent a non-significant amount of time near the cost. You also don't need the news to tell you that you just felt a large earthquake, get to high ground.
