Tsunami

We've been following the terrible news from Japan, as you'd imagine. From Friday to Sunday, we received a number of e-mails and phone calls asking about Yuriko's relatives. I'm glad to report that they live at quite a distance from Miyagi Prefecture, which is up on the coast from Tokyo and roughly 400 miles from Osaka -- a little further than San Francisco is from Los Angeles.

Some of the early reports of the disaster on US TV, at least, seemed to offer no clear information on just what part of the country had been hit by the earthquake and tsunami. If you'd never heard of Miyagi Prefecture or Sendai, it would be easy to imagine that was pretty much anywhere in the Japanese archipelago.

At this point, we can only hope the nuclear part of the disaster is more Three Mile Island than Chernobyl. At least the Japanese didn't go with the "we don't need no stinkin' containment building" school of nuclear power plant design favored by Soviets of yore.