pinch me

So there was not much of a tsunami finally. A couple of places in northern Japan saw waves of 40 cm/16" but received no damage. Thanks for your concern, those of you who heard about the big undersea earthquake off the Kurile Islands above Japan and contacted me. I thought I'd give an update and some links for anyone who trolls my blog while I'm asleep (everyone who reads it basically!) and who might worry if they hear such warnings again in the future.

Firstly, here's a link to a map that shows the regions of Japan so that you can situate Tokyo in its region, which is Kanto. Hokkaido, the region targeted in yesterday's tsunami warning, is quite far north of here as you'll see.

There's also the Japan Meteorological Agency's website if you want info on tsunami warnings or recent earthquakes. However, it's not real user friendly if you don't know Japan very well. The best way to tell if anything is affecting us is to check the recent earthquakes (main) map for a red X in our region. A trick to help you locate us is to look for Tokyo Bay (here's a closeup from a little quake nearby last Monday). You can also look at the list of recent quakes but that's where it can be tricky because they're listed by sub-region names so it's harder to recognize things that affect Tokyo.

And you don't have to worry at all if the dots (indicating seismic intensity) are white, blue or green, which they usually are so please don't worry!