One of my friends is married to an American international pilot-- her husband is currently stranded in Narita. He reports that they're letting planes land, but have still delayed all outgoing flights for safety. There are apparently thousands of homes in Tokyo without power, and then there's the Fukushima nuclear plant... It's times like these that the world seems full of vast gulfs, no matter how small technology makes it seem.
I remember the summer I spent in Saitama, near Kawagoe. We got the rain backlash from the taifu that hit Tokyo-- a bad one, but nothing as off the hook as this. After school let out, I carried Wakami-chan down the hill on my hip, because the streets were flooded up to my calves. It's scary to think how far reaching nature can be, even to places that escape the epicenter of the event. I hope you'll think about/ pray for Japan if you can-- my nebulous prayers are out there, especially for my host-mother Yoko-san, and for little Wakami and her brother and sister. My faith isn't very well defined, but it's there.
To quote father Mulcahy, I'm kind of a crazy agnostic. ^^;;
-Meredith