Chop!

Here's hoping that all our Japanese contributers are all safe & well, and that they stay safe through the coming trials that these poor people are struggling through.

badmother

+1 Scary stuff .

brakemeister

our collective thoughts are with you
Thor

ShinyBiker

RIP to all that have lost their lives.

My thoughts and prayers are for a quick resolution of the nuclear crisis. Very scary stuff.

bendembroski

+2

owenfinn

18 hours until I`m on a flight with family to NY. Just worried that increased radiation levels or another quake before then will force the closing of the airport.

18 long hours.

Chop!

Hope you get a flight OK & that you & your family arrive safely in NY.

Sangetsu

I have lived in Japan for years, and it has been a good country to me, it is now my home, and I have no intention of leaving in the foreseeable future.

We all know that disasters can come to any place at any time. I lived through two major quakes in Los Angeles, and hurricanes Katrina and Wilma while living in the southeast, so I am well beyond thinking that there is any such thing as a "safe" place.

The western media is doing their best to stoke the fires of doom and gloom as the "news" in America is primarily a money-making business, but very likely the nuclear reactor problems will end up being insignificant when compared to the other damage in the country.

That flight to NYC will likely expose the average person to more radiation than 99% of Japanese will be exposed to during this crisis.

kamtsa

Reminds me 89 Loma Prieta earthquate. Friends and family abroad where sure that California has been completely destroyed. Naturally the media focuses on the sensational aspects. Otherwise we would not watch it.

We have family in Nagasaki and Yokohama and according to them life is more or less back to normal with the exception of power and transportation outages in Yokohama.

owenfinn

I love Yokohama and Japan. I really really hope you are right. Bottom line is we caved into our instincts as parents to protect our children.

If there was reason to believe that what you say is true and would be true for the foreseeable future we would have stayed. I can gauge with certainty the amount of radiation they would be exposed to during a flight or while getting an x-ray, but I have no way of knowing what level of radiation they will be exposed to if we stayed and things got worse.

It was extremely frustrating trying to get information about a worst case scenario. The statements by the govt and TEPCO were vague and never definitive, worse, as time went by, I got the feeling they were losing control of the situation. On the other hand I know how the US media can over-sensationalize things. I was desperately trying to obtain facts and reliable information. The information I got was conflicting and got me nowhere, so in the end we decided not to take any chances.

owenfinn

Things were definitely not back to normal in Yokohama last night. The streets were almost empty and people have started hoarding at supermarkets. You could feel the tension everywhere without a doubt.