Earthquake update

Hi everyone.
Thank you all for the inquiries into how we are doing. We are all fine. Jeff was actually away for the earthquake as he was in Bangkok giving a workshop. It was a bit stressful fr him being away and hearing of the earthquake. He is now happy to be at home with family.
The house was a bit shaken up (a few things fell over and some broke) but that is about it. The biggest inconvenience for us right now is that we have no car. The car is still in the parking garage at Costco as the ramp to the parkade fell over and Yuki therefore had to leave the car at work. Below are some pictures of the Costco ramp.

Everything seemed much more real for Jeff after he arrived at Narita and he saw some of the international rescue teams that had arrived at the airport. This is a shot of the team from Taiwan.

The trains are own today to try and conserve power and put less stress on the nuclear power plants in Fukushima so not much is going on. Also the fires at the oil refineries in Chiba have caused gasoline shortages (the stations that do have gas are lined up for kilometers). Our neighborhood gasoline station emailed us to tell us that they will be out of gas by this afternoon. Rotating power outages are scheduled for the next few days until things stabilize. I was at the supermarket early this morning to stock up on some essentials - the place was packed at 750 in the morning and many essential items (drinks, bread, rice, etc) were selling out (I waited in line over half an hour to pay!).

With the trains down, transportation systems were a mess this morning as people who were told to come in to work tried to get there. Here is the scene in front of my little local station - lines for non-existent cabs and big waits for buses (my bike works fine though!).

There are still lots of aftershocks (a big one of about 6.2 this morning) so things are still pretty tense. While feeling inconvenienced but relatively very lucky, we are making the best of our situation; spending time with the neighbors etc. Here is a picture of Sumire and the neighbor girl at the park this afternoon.

We will try to keep you posted promptly of any changes.

(We just had some more shaking as I am finishing up this blog post!)