How the Japanese people are communicating with each other

App for your smart phone.

When the earthquake hit northern Japan on Friday, voice calls from mobile phones became immediately unavailable in order to leave room for emergency calls, The Japan Times reports. However, in the Kanto area, mobile Internet connection was mostly kept on, and many people turned to the Web to exchange information.

On Japan's main social networking site, mixi, some communities were set up soon after the quake to keep people informed. The largest onenow has over 300,000 members and it has guides to communities by region and purpose.
Mixi also has a function that displays how recently your friends logged in, so you can check if your friends have accessed mixi after the quake. Another feature, ashiato (footprints) — which was once one of the key attractions to mixi — shows when another user viewed your page (profile/diary/message/etc). While it is possible to send messages to your most important family and friends, features that do not require any direct interaction meant that even those who are not close friends can see who is OK. 

Twitter was heavily used as well. When most railways stopped in greater Tokyo on Friday evening, many office workers were isolated in central Tokyo and decided to either stay put or walk back home. A lot of assistance was offered over Twitter by stores, restaurants, campuses and even people in houses along main roads who tweeted that help was available. Twitter even set some official hashtags to help identify your tweet, such as #jishin (general earthquake information); #j_j_helpme (requests for rescue or other aid); #hinan (evacuation information); #anpi (confirmation of safety of individuals, places, etc.); #311care (medical information for victims). And although it is not official, #jishin_e seems to be used for English, too.

Meantime, I've found another smartphone app for earthquakes.

Earthquake Lite, which is free for Apple or Android. (If you hate ads, buy the $2 iPhone version). The software displays global seismic activity in a nicely designed format, and offers lists of events that you can filter by location, magnitude and time. 

On Thursday, for instance, the app listed the afternoon’s most recent earthquakes, including nine significant tremors near Japan’s east coast, and one in western China. The map view lets you dial down to see the epicenter.