Earthquake in Japan

If you watch TV, you hear a lot of damages caused by the earthquake in Japan.
Let me give you some info which may be hard to get from the US media.

The hardest hit areas are in the northern part of Japan where I do
not have any relatives or friends. Thus, I have not heard any casuality
or property damages among my circle.

My wife is in Tokyo for an extended period time to take care of her parents and told me
that the jolt in Tokyo was pretty bad. But she did not lose any utility services or anything.
The train services are back to normal.  People do not travel by car like in the US.
Two of my friends were in high rise buildings at the time and one could not go home
because of no train service. The other one walked for 4 hours to get home.

Nuclear power plants to service the Tokyo metropolitan area suffered from the quake.
They do not have enough power and they may need to do rolling blackouts.
As you know, nuclear is used to provide baseline power in Japan as in many other countries.
When I interviewed Tepco AND Kepco, they both were proud of their infrastructures and
reliable services.  I was skeptical about their readiness for acquiring other sources of energy.
This implies the real needs of energy sources other than the legacy ones in Japan and
US.

I will be in Japan in two weeks and  be in the Tokyo area where aftershocks are expected.
I came from the western part of Japan where earthquakes were rare and am
not used to it. The one here in 1989 scared me to death. The one in Kobe
in 1995 was news to me.........I was in the US then and did not experience it.

Zen
P.S> Tepco http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html
kepco http://www.kepco.co.jp/english/index.html