I'm in Yamanashi. My wife and son both work in Kofu, the prefectural capital. Power is out and they both left work early. No traffic lights, streets were chaotic. They were told it was magnitude 5 there. My wife says it's the worst she's ever experienced, and she was really scared. My daughter is in Tokyo. She's OK but stuck at the uni and can't get home as trains are not running. Cellphone service was effectively down, and it took several hours to get through to her.

As for me, absolutely no effect. Due to our village's underlying geological structure -- essentially a huge monolithic slab of bedrock -- I barely even felt the earthquake, and I was sitting perfectly still at my desk. My wife and son, having just lived through the biggest jolt of their lives, were absolutely amazed to come home and find that not a single item even fell off a shelf. And no power outage here, either, I guess it's been my lucky day.

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Rick Davis
rdavis at yin dot or dot jp