At least one Canadian dead in Japanese quake, gov't confirms

Canadians in Tokyo are awestruck by the calm, controlled and organized way Japanese citizens are dealing with Friday's monstrous earthquake that has claimed at least one Canadian life.

The consensus is that there's no way Canadians would be nearly as prepared for such a disaster.

There are few details available about the Canadian who died. Foreign Affairs is confirming the death, but wants to respect the family's privacy.

It's estimated there as many as 12-thousand Canadians either living or visiting Japan, among them Youki Harada who lived through the frightening ordeal.

When reached in Tokyo on Saturday, Harada said she couldn't picture the same calm situation in her home town of Vancouver after such a quake.

"I remember two years ago when Vancouver had that snow storm and no one could get home," she said in a phone interview from Tokyo. "I can not imagine any other country being this ready to go."

Harada, 25, has been working at an ad agency in Tokyo for the last four months. When the quake struck she had just returned from lunch on her ninth floor office.

At first no one reacted, she said, because they thought it was just another tremor, but before long the building was swaying and then shaking up and down.

"I just remember being under my desk thinking when is this going to end," she sighed. "All my elementary school earthquake education training just kind of went out the door, it was such a panic attack."

She said her Japanese coworkers were far calmer and they started doing what needed to be done immediately.

"I'm just so shocked how prepared they are for earthquakes. They know their evacuation route, they know where to meet, they know all these technical procedures. Everyone's just helping each other out."

Even on her three-hour walk home Friday night, she said no children were crying, the elderly were being looked after and no one seemed in a panic.

Kristin Kobayashi of Toronto and her father are on vacation in Japan and she was in a Tokyo store when the 8.9-magnitude quake hit. At first she and her father didn't know what was happening.

She says once it was evident it was an earthquake, everyone rushed out into the streets.

"We were more incredulous than scared," Kobayashi wrote in an email to The Canadian Press.

Although some people around were crying, there was no screaming or mass hysteria, Kobayashi said.

"Little did we know that was just the Japanese way, they internalize their reactions so as not to make a scene," she said.

"It was relatively tame compared to the reaction of my fellow Torontonians when that earthquake hit the Kingston-area last summer." The June, 2010 earthquake that shook parts of Quebec and Ontario was a magnitude 5.0.

Tokyo sustained little damage compared to the country's shattered northeast where the resulting tsunami has caused extensive destruction, but Kobayashi says she was up until 4 a.m. local time answering a flood of messages from friends and family who were worried.

"It was overwhelming and touching at the same time," she said.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Department was still trying to account for Canadians living or visiting Japan.

Of the Canadians in Japan, only 1,773 were registered with the Canadian Embassy. Thirteen Canadians were registered as being in the hardest hit area, a Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said.

Kobayashi, a fourth generation Canadian of Japanese descent, just left university and the trip to Japan was to be a graduation gift. She was planning to head for Kyoto in the country's south, hoping to experience everything Japan has to offer.

The earthquake has provided her with something more than she would have probably come away with if the disaster hadn't struck.

"We are just so fortunate that our loved ones back home are safe and that we have the opportunity to continue along our journey across this beautiful country during such a devastating time," she said.

"I think that has made the trip exponentially more meaningful for us, Japan has exposed her soul to us as she reels from this ongoing tragedy."

Both Harada and Kobayashi say Tokyo is extremely quiet, and the city is still be rattled by constant aftershocks.

Harada has had a difficult time sleeping and she's worried about radiation and other chemicals that could poison the atmosphere and she's been given a mask to wear just in case.

"This is a lot of precautionary stuff that they're advising us to do. Not to drink tap water, not to use so much energy right now so that people in Sendai and Miyagi and use our energy."

Canadians in need of emergency consular assistance in Japan should contact the embassy in Tokyo at 011-81-3-5412-6200, or can call the department's emergency operations centre collect to 613-944-2471 or 613-943-1055. Emails can also be sent to sos@international.gc.ca.