The news reports coming out from Japan are becoming bleaker and bleaker as the hours go by. Many more houses in towns and villages along the Pacific are reportedly destroyed, including 1,800 houses in Minami-Soma. The nuclear power plant in Fukushima will have to release the steam which contains small amount of radioactivity. There have been further aftershocks. There has been a strong quake whose epicentre was in Niigata, another earthquake-prone region: whether this quake was related to the big quake in the Pacific is not clear. If there are connections between the two quake regions, that would be extremely unsettling.
A note on the sources
I have relied on information available at Japanese internet sites, mainly asahi.com and Yomiuri Online, the two largest daily newspapers in the country, and Kahoku Online Network, a regional paper, as well as official sources, such as Japan Meteorological Agency and the National Police Agency.