http://www.cnn.com/

I just heard that it hit off-shore a decent way away, but it's been causing HUGE damage:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia- ... 70826.html

Here's a HQ stream:
http://salmon.gundam.eu/streaman/

This hit Japan just before midnight my time - I heard about the warning Japan issued before it hit via twitter and was tuned into Japanese news streams from then until nearly 4 in the morning.

I'm not sure how much of the live feed was preserved and is being shown now, but I seriously can't convey how powerful it was seeing it live. I saw video of cars driving away from tsunami waves and ultimately being engulfed by them - that stuck out the most. I was sitting here eating chocolate almonds and at that very same moment someone's family was being washed away while driving on a road.

I cried manly tears last night as my heart goes out to everybody involved. My wife's family especially!

I never saw the live feeds, but I did watch the replays on a YouTube newscast. Seeing houses carried away by the waves with no sign of the water stopping was a frightful sight. And it was really brought into perspective just how much water this was when they showed the water's height increasing floor by floor of a several-storied building.

What makes this even more scary is that one of my cousins was supposed to be deployed there with his new family in just a couple months.

And now a nuclear Power plant is melting down.

WHERE'S GODZILLA WHEN WE NEED HIM!!!!

(sorry, I can't help but try to lighten the mood in a heavy room)

Too soon, buddy.

Seriously, Staffy, too damn soon. Way too damn soon.

I went out for sushi last night and this guy I was with was like "im surprised this place even has fish to feed us after that quake" and I nearly punched his teeth out.

Funny considering I'm normally the first to crack an awful joke! BUT NOPE, I'M EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THIS ONE.

Inconsiderate. But that's what I expect from someone who accepts an ultimatum.

Hey now, the joke was in extremely bad taste, true. But I'm not unsympathetic to what he was trying to convey, so let's just chill a sec, y'all. It's not the time to jump down people's throats.

But Staffy, you gotta read the mood a bit more.

No dudes, Godzilla tries to HELP Japan! Watch the movies. It's always those hard line military types that mess up what he(she?) is trying to do! Godzilla would be all like "Nuclear reactor meltdown?! RAAAAAWWWWR! Not anymore!"

Sorry you guys took it the wrong way, but i didn't mean it like that! HONEST!!!

::Edit:: And Also, after I posted, I considered going back and replacing "godzilla" with "ultraman" but, was afraid of low reference recognition.

Well maybe you should've, it would've surely saved us all this awkwardness.

I think you would do well apologizing for that horrible joke instead of apologizing for us not taking it the way you meant (even though I'm fairly sure we all 'got' it exactly the way you intended). And the fact your continued your joke from your original post has lost pretty much any respect I might have had for you.

Moving along...

Gizmodo had some footage of how fast the flooding happened. I'm astonished how quickly things turn for the worst. This video starts off with you being able to see the street, to rising up over the first floor of the buildings (sweeping cars away all the while) and eventually it starts taking the buildings too. I can't imagine what it's like seeing your home uproot from the ground and just disappear right in front of you.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5781566/this-is-th ... sunami-yet

(This may be the same video Erika was talking about.)

Actually I speak of this:



As the wave of water travels across the countryside at the beginning, and as the water travels up the sides of a building starting at 2:50.

But I saw the video you linked to, too. It's amazing that so much water would flood in just like that. I mean, yeah, it basically has the backing of the ENTIRE OCEAN, but that just makes it more freakish to think that a natural event could displace that much water.

You know, I think the language barrier really makes things a little bit difficult to fully feel the weight of the situation. The lady that sang the theme song for Plants Vs Zombies is Japanese but is fluent in English. And it really starts driving it home when she mentioned her relatives who are still missing. Not knowing if they were okay or not.

And we thought what happened in New Orleans was bad...

New Orleans had warning.

But the difference there is that Japanese government actually gives a shite.

Because the government has to do with the disasters occurring. The disaster and the response to it are two different things.

( I was Zing-ing our government there SF.)

I'm not unaware enough to not know what you were doing. Stop "zing-ing" and making jokes in here. It is inappropriate, and inconsiderate in the light of what this topic is about.

Co-signed.