Bloggers in Japan note 2009 anime warned of big earthquake

Mt. Fuji on the island of Honshu as seen from the space shuttle. The snow-capped inactive volcano, surrounded at lower levels by clouds in this image, lies several miles south of Tokyo.The quake's magnitude near the east coast of Honshu was 8.9 said the USGS in a computer generated announcement not yet reviewed by a seismologist. (Image courtesy of NASA;from CIA World Fact Book)

Blogs related to Japan are teeming with comments related to the earthquake on March 11, and one commenter at Japanator said the quake brought to mind an anime from 2009. ‘Tokyo Magnitude 8.0’ won the Excellence Prize in the Animation category at Japan’s Media Arts Festival in 2009 according to Wikipedia.

The Anime News Network said the episode’s premise rests on the “70 percent or higher possibility that a magnitude 7.0 earthquake will occur in Tokyo in the next 30 years.” The anime told the story of a teen girl, Mirai, and her brother, Yuuki, caught in a resort area after “a powerful tremor emanates from an ocean trench.” The teens try to make their way home to western Tokyo, and that journey makes up the plot. The story is set in 2012.

In a computer generated message not yet reviewed by a seismologist, the US Geological Survey said the earthquake’s preliminary magnitude was 8.9 near the east coast of Honshu. USGS said the quake occurred “as a result of thrust faulting on or near the subduction zone interface plate boundary between the Pacific and North America plates.”

USGS also said the March 11 quake “was preceded by a series of large foreshocks over the previous two days…”

One Tokyo resident blogging at Akihabara News said, “I have been living in Japan since 10 years but never see that in my entire stay here…” The commenter said the third floor of his house was a mess.

A resident of Nagasaki posting at Japanator said he didn’t even know there was a quake until he got home after work.

USGS also detailed “an extraordinary pair of earthquakes” in the Sanriku district of NE Japan in 1896 and 1933. The 1896 quake killed more than 20,000  people because of a tsunami. USGS analyzes in technical language quakes in the Japan Trench area. USGS said, “The Japan Trench subduction zone has hosted 9 events of magnitude 7 or greater since 1973. The largest…was an M 7.8 earthquake approximately 260 km to the north of the March 11 event, in December, 1994, which caused 3 fatalities and almost 700 injuries.” A quake measured at M 7.7 occurred in June, 1978.

Discovery News published startling photos of Sendai Airport after the tsunami spawned by the earthquake hit.

A commenter at Japanator said of the March 11 quake, “The Sendai footage is just…scary. It took away everything like it weighed nothing at all.”

The US Geological Survey said tsunami warnings have been issued for parts of the US west coast. (Graphic, screen snip from USGS)

(Filed by Kay B. Day/March 11, 2011)

~Please help keep The US Report online. Use the link at the top of the right column to donate a small amount for support.

Update on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 10:23AM by Kay B. Day, Editor

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued estimated times of arrival for tsunami along the North American Pacific coast.