Japan moved about 8 feet, and the Earth’s axis has been tilted by about 6.5 inches, changing the speed of the planet’s rotation and shortening the day by 1.8 millionths of a second. But as horrible as this earthquake is, even upgraded to magnitude 9.0 it’s only the fourth most powerful in my lifetime.
We’ve been planning to buy a new Honda CRV sometime before September. Our ’02 CRV was made in Japan, and not to be petty in my concern about the earthquake, I was nevertheless worried that it would affect the supply. But according to Honda, CRV production is now done mostly in the U.S.
This happened during the night after we landed in Phoenix. Naturally, we could not access Dad’s computer or TV, so we were totally in the dark as to what had happened. Molly is a total Japanophile, and was pretty upset till she got the full story. I, too, was surprised, that this was only the 4th most powerful in our lifetime. Of more concern to the Japanese are the thousands missing from the tsunami and the damage to the nuclear power plants.