Shock and devastation

Chico Harlan (Washington Post): Throughout the country, transportation was halted and mobile-phone networks were jammed. Tokyo's main Narita international airport halted flights for much of Friday afternoon. Stranded salarymen in downtown Tokyo crowded around televisions, watching the NHK network replay a loop of the images: slow-dancing Tokyo skyscrapers and building-blitzing waves. Television footage showed towering walls of water surging toward the shoreline, pulling cars into the surf and discarding ships on land.

-eddie