Earthquake, 6 on the Japanese scale of 7, just hit Sendai–and NHK shows fires going in the city, shown from a helicopter camera. I am really not too surprised–I am roughly 400 km from the epicenter, and that was the biggest quake I’ve felt in Japan so far. And I’ve been here for 12 years.

Tenki.jp and Hi-Net are currently overloaded.

More as it comes in.

UPDATE: OK, those two web sites I mentioned are back up. Hi-Net is showing a 6.7 quake on the Richter scale.

To the right is a partial image from Tenki.jp.

I felt it right after coming home from shopping, and man, that was strong, not to mention long-lasting here. It also obviously far-travelling–immediately after it died down, I turned on my TV, and they were already showing detailed maps showing the magnitude all around Tohoku. That means they had time to get the graphics up, which means the quake hit Sendai some minutes before it must have gotten to Tokyo.

I called up my brother, who also lives in Tokyo; he picked up his phoen and immediately said, “No, I didn’t feel anything!” (Joking, of course.)

At right, I am adding a picture of all recent quaked in the region; the green star is the big one. Below is a table with info on the quake. Both these graphics are from Hi-net.