If your looking for doom and gloom go else where. This is my personal perspective. Things appear fairly bad elsewhere, but for me everything was fairly normal. I'm writing this so I remember, not so everyone else can. As such I'm going to use proper place names and not try to be nice to a foreign audience.
That said here is my story. When the shaking started I was in lab, like normal. For about 2min we thought it was kind of fun. Then it got bad enough that it looked like stuff might start falling, so we got under out desks. One of the lab mates said something along the lines of "This isn't fun anymore make it stop". However Nothing fell, nothing at all. I had brought some beer back from the states as a gift to my lab. It was just sitting on top of the fridge, it didn't even move.
After the quake we all went outside, I was on facebook 30 second after the thing happened and already saw 10 statuses up. We waited outside for about 15 min, it was cold. We made sure all of our lab mates were accounted for and then started checking the internet. That was the extent of how much my Japanese friends worried. I was trying to figure out what was going on with my shitty Japanese. American news sources hadn't picked up the story yet so I was fairly in the dark. Basically I used it as an excuse to learn some earthquake vocab.
After 15 min we went back inside, checked the lab, there was some spilled water from an water bath, and a file cabinet drawer was open. That was the extent of the damage to my lab. Hell even our yeast cultures hadn't tipped over.
The building was slightly worse off. Buildings B1 and B2 are connected, the connection past the 6th floor was slightly cracked.
After checking we all went back to the lab. Chatted for about 5 min and went back to work. An aftershock hit about 10 min later. We all quickly went outside again (while the earthquake was going on, probably not the best idea) and stayed out for another 10 min before being allowed to go back in again.
At that point half the lab was on twitter or other news sites. There were continous small aftershocks that occurred once about every 20 min. After the first one people were phaseed. I was on facebook talking to friends. Slowly people started getting back to work. I couldn't focus so I just stayed on facebook and twitter. One of the guys in my lab was pissed when he found out the trains weren't running. He had a part time job that he needed to get to.
We were in the holding pattern until 5. I decided I wasn't getting any work done so I walked home with my lab mate. We tried to catch a train, but they still weren't running so we walked home 4km. We walked through a blackout area, including one 7-11 that had no power but was still open. People were casually walking around and buying things, business as usual, without power.
That was the extent of the damage I saw when walking home. There was a giant traffic jam, but thats expected when the trains stop running. When we got back to Aobadai we saw a long line for taxis and people milling around the station, but that was about it.
My lab mate and I decided to eat dinner at Matsuya, it was full (never seen that before) and due to the earthquake half of their menu was sold out. Other than that it was business as usual.
After that I went home and watched Japanese news like everyone else. We felt some more after shocks (I feel them now a day later actually) there was even a small party in my dorm.
All and all I, and the majority of my friends were largely unaffected by the quake one of my friends had to walk home (like 20km) but only walked half way because the trains started running again.
One of my friends is still stuck in Ueno because his train isn't running.
Thankfully two acquaintances I have in Sendai are alive and well, but without power.
As of now 75% of Tokyo's trains are running and Aobadai appears to be back to normal.
That about sums the entire thing up. I expect to be able to go back to work on Monday.
Now as for the rest of the country, I can't speak to that. I don't trust America news sources right now, and can't understand enough Japanese to really get a feel for whats going on. It appears elsewhere that this was actually a huge deal. I hope the Sendai and Fukushima situations resolve themselves without to many problems.
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