Postcard from Japan: Bullet Train to Nagoya | The New Yorker

The frightening thing about the earthquake was that it began to grow stronger around the time most tremors in earthquake-prone Tokyo peter out. I was working in a café a ten-minute walk from the apartment I share with my wife and eighteen-month-old son. As the shaking became violent, patrons around me began to shout and even scream, and in an instant we were all out on the street, together with hundreds of others who poured forth from oddly creaking buildings. The sidewalk looked, and felt, like a packed rush-hour train; I had to catch my balance to remain standing. I tried calling my wife. No signal.