The history of the big earthquakes and those aftershocks

I compiled the history of the big earthquakes and those aftershocks. As you can see below, the powerful aftershock occurred just two months later at the earliest. So we need to be very cautious about the aftershock this time around.

The name of earthquake                                                   Aftershock

Ansei-Tōkai earthquake on Dec 23, 1854                        Nov 7, 1855
  (M8.4)                                                                             (M7.0〜7.5)

Meiji-Sanriku earthquake on June 15, 1896                      Aug 31, 1896 
  (M8.2〜8.5)                                                                    (M7.2)

Great Kantō earthquake on Sep 1, 1923                           Jan 15, 1924
 (M7.9)                                                                               (M7.3)

Sumatra earthquake on Dec 26, 2004                               Mar 28, 2005
 (M9.1)                                                                               (M8.6)     

Great East Japan earthquake on Mar 11, 2011                             ?
(M9.0)

Chile's Que Pasa magazine published my story on the 3/11 earthquake

My story on the 3/11 earthquake appeared in Chile's Que Pasa magazine.


OPINIÓN & POSTEOS
Mundo: Crecer en un país nuclear
Sufrimos con las bombas atómicas, pero nos hicimos independientes con la energía nuclear. Hoy tenemos miedo a la radiactividad de Fukushima. Nuestra historia sigue escribiéndose con ironías.
Por Kosuke Takahashi, desde Tokio
Periodista japonés
31/03/2011

This became my first article in Spanish http://t.co/YiRkN6H

Cheers,

Kosuke

universal brotherhood

Although I have thought Japan should reduce its security dependence on the US military gradually and embark on its own defense policy as a normal country, this time we Japanese really appreciate American military support for earthquake and tsunami victims.

Under the Koizumi cabinet, we Japanese strongly supported the US in the wake of 9/11. Americans must remember that. This time, the US is strongly suppporting us. Thanks a lot.

Let's hang on, Japan! Let's hang on Tohoku!

I am not a computer geek at all. But afer spending one hour, I managed to make this graphics.

This says, "がんばろう、日本！がんばろう、東北！

(Ganbarou, Nippon! Ganbarou, Tohoku!)"

In English, this means "Let's hang on, Japan! Let's hang on, Tohoku!"

Please spread out this graphics to your friends.

Thanks and regards,

Kosuke

On March 20, the biggest full moon since March 1993 will occur

On March 20 in Japan (March 19 in the US), the biggest full moon since March 1993 will occur. It’s called a super "perigee moon.” The tide will come in more than usual. People on the coastline hit by tsunamim, just in case, better watch the tide .

日本時間の3月20日(米国時間19日)は1993年3月以来の満月の大きさとなる。その分、大きな満ち潮となる。津波被害にあった海岸地域の方々、ぜひ頭に入れておいてください。

A list of Twitter hashtags on Japan earthquake

#jishin : 地震情報(info on earthquake)

#j_j_helpme : 救助要請(a call for help)

#hinan : 避難情報(info on evacuation)

#anpi : 安否確認(safety confirmation)

#311care : 医療支援(medical support)

(My latest story for Asia Times) Record-high yen assaults Japan

Very, very good news. This afternoon I just got a phone call from my relative in Miyagi Prefecture. He and his mother survived. I was pretty much relieved to hear they are safe.

Mitsunori Goto, 48, my relative, who survived the earthquake one week ago, said his car was swept by the tsunami but he managed to escape alive. At that time, he was in Ishinomaki City of Miyagi. He gave me a phone call today. He is a former SDF member.
Also, my late grandma's house located in Tome City of Miyagi did not collapse during the earthquake. My mother and I always go to this house every Obon season around mid-August.

Here is my latest story for Asia Times. I criticized speculative FX trading, which took advantage of nuke fears in Japan.  Cheers, Kosuke

Record-high yen assaults Japan
 By Kosuke Takahashi

TOKYO - Greed and fear move markets, one popular proverb on Wall Street says. Speculative market players, taking advantage of greed and fear, are now assaulting Japan, seeking to gain in the wake of the country's worst recorded earthquake, subsequent big aftershocks, massive tsunami, tremendous loss of life and nuclear panic.

With nuclear fears on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant rising, speculators are aggressively buying the Japanese yen amid　cat-and-dog surging demand for the currency, pushing up the yen to a record post-World War II high of 76.25 to the US dollar on early Thursday in Tokyo. The yen at this level will likely hit the profitability of Japanese exporters such as Toyota and Sony in coming months, although it can help lower prices of imported crude oil and other raw materials.

Why do speculators buy the yen, instead of selling it, as geopolitical risks of Japan on nuclear radiation are rising and the Japanese economy is expected to slow down in coming months due to massive earthquake damage?

The prevailing notion in the markets is that global money managers and hedge funds, as well as Japanese mom-and-pop investors, are increasingly seeking to reduce investment risk due to the global downturn in stocks, and that those investors are unwinding so-called yen carry trades, which under less volatile financial times allow traders to capitalize on Japan's ultra-low interest rates to buy higher-yielding assets in Australia and elsewhere.

But the real reason is not a simple yen-buying based on risk aversion. They are actually taking big speculative risks to bet on the yen's further rise by buying it. They simply buy the Japanese currency, as they think that people want to buy the yen in times of emergency world-wide.

Yen-buying and losses in the stock markets started to pile up late morning New York time on Wednesday after European Union Energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger warned of "further catastrophic events" in the coming hours in Japan, saying they "could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island".

He said that one of Japan's nuclear plants was "effectively out of control", and that the situation could continue to deteriorate. Europe's energy chief later played down his warning, as his spokeswoman said his comments were based on media reports, his personal fears and so forth after the comments alarmed global financial markets.

Then, losses in the stock markets and yen-buying accelerated after the United States Embassy in Japan urged American citizens living within 80 kilometers of the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant to evacuate as a precautionary measure.

Nuclear pundits around the globe have mentioned Japan’s possible nuclear crisis as being equivalent to the 1986 Chernobyl accident. They seldom mention a basic but important fact. Unlike Chernobyl, Japan managed to automatically shut down all the nuclear power reactors in Fukushima immediately after the earthquake on March 11. This is quite different from Chernobyl.

"The yen is being bought as nuke fears are exaggerated abroad," said Yuji Saito, director of the foreign exchange department in Tokyo at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank. "By taking advantage of those exaggerated fears, speculators aimed to trigger massive stop-loss orders of yen-buying at the level of a previous record-high of 79.75 yen against the dollar. They succeeded in doing so by triggering those stop orders amid very thin trading between New York and Tokyo times."

Saito said now that speculators had finished hitting another record-high of the yen against the dollar, they fear intervention by the Japanese authorities in the currency markets by selling the yen, and have already started to sell the yen by riding on possible future intervention by the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan.

"Crucially, FX [foreign exchange] carry positions have likely been wiped out, without a severe jump in volume, so overall, conditions for risk appetite/releverage actually appear to be reasonable and there will be investors with strong interest in buying cross-JPY," UBS wrote in a report on Thursday. "Of course, if the news flow deteriorates yet again, the market could yet turn, but overall last night's price action seems very FX-specific and stops/barriers driven than any indication of fundamental fear-induced deleveraging."

Expectations are rising that central bank officials and the Group of Seven finance ministers will decide to assist Japan's recovery efforts and also approve, or at least understand, Japan's currency intervention at an emergency meeting by phone on Friday. The Group of Seven is composed of the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada.

"Japan will be forced to sell US Treasuries if it really needs the costs of its reconstruction," Saito said. "This would be severely damaging to the US. So I think the world led by the US will help Japan this time."

As of January 2011, Japan holds $885.9 billion of US Treasuries, the second-largest holder, following China's $1.15 trillion.

Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. He is a regular TV commentator at Nikkei CNBC in Tokyo. He previously was a currency reporter for Bloomberg News in Tokyo under the pen name of Kosuke Goto.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Here is a search site to find missing persons in Japan

Here is a search site to find missing persons in Japan.


Please spread out this with Twitter and Facebook and whatever.

http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/ (Japanese)
http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=en  (English)
http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=zh-CN (Chinese)
http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=ko  (Korean)

Thanks and regards,

Kosuke