Japan Quake: Tsunami mud wave overtakes town in northern Japan

[Video Link] (Tokyo Broadcast News)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Hosidax

We are so tiny in this world.
Locobot

They’re going to need one of the spa’s best tokens for this.
Cowicide

Is the man saying there are people in those houses or were they cleared out first? I really hope no one was in those houses!!!
- halavais
  
  The counts at 1:47 are estimated deaths, city-by-city, so it’s safe to assume that there was a pretty effective evacuation. But such an evacuation is never 100%. My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones.
  
  I lived for a time in a city that was expected to be destroyed by “the big one” (it had been leveled by an earthquake in the 18th century, and suffered badly in other quakes/tsunamis), and so I had nightmares now and again. But none of them were as bad as this reality.
  - Cowicide
    
    This makes my heart ache. This is just so horrible. I can’t even imagine surviving something like this and I’m sure all phones are down in these areas and you wouldn’t have any idea if you loved ones and friends were dead or alive.
    
    A worst nightmare come true, indeed.
Aloisius

Man, Youtube needs some optional auto-stabilization post-processing.
- Anonymous
  
  auto-stablization is pretty sophisticated stuff. Not exactly the sort of thing you put on a casual web site.
That Evening Sun

Wow. Yes, I would like to echo the hope that this town was evacuated in time.
Anonymous

I believe the numbers displayed (and read) around 2 minutes are numbers of people. However, the numbers look rather low for the disaster being shown.
LMA

This is the single most devastating video I’ve seen of the earthquake so far … and the reason is the intonation of the commentator. I’ve been to Japan once and only speak enough to order at a restaurant, so I was unable to understand anything the newscaster is saying here, but in this case, you don’t need comprehension — his tone of voice says everything.

The entire time I kept begging those people “don’t stay and watch — keep climbing, keep climbing!” as if they could hear me. Then you think of all the people in the buildings, and the cars, who no longer even have that option. Heartbreaking.
Gunn

The numbers on the screen were known fatalities in specific cities/towns, and the announcer was reading them off. So far. those are much lower figures than the videos would lead you to expect, but it’s really too soon for an accurate count. (My knowledge of Japanese isn’t good enough to grasp more of what he was saying.)