On March 18, 2011, the school my daughter attends, The Neighborhood School (PS363) in New York City, hosted a fundraising event for the victims of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami. At the event, we filmed the students cheering for Japan, “Ganbare Nippon!”, which means “Don’t give up, Japan” or “Go Japan Go!”.

What Japan needs right now, more than anything else, is your emotional support. If you are a foreigner living in Japan, and want to get out of there, then just get out, but don’t spread hysteria or panic, since that only makes things worse. (Yeah, thanks a lot Gregory Jaczko!)

It’s funny and sad at the same time. I’m not sure if this was made for kids or adults either. It likens nuclear reactors to kids with bellyache. It is trying to explain that the reactors are right now farting, but not pooing.

To see what the Japanese people are watching on TV, you can go to ustream.tv for the live streaming of their public TV network, NHK. Also, here is a page with a collection of videos (scroll to the bottom of the page). But naturally, they are going to be sensitive to the feelings of the Japanese people so as not to cause any panic, which means their reporting will be rather conservative. For instance, they did not broadcast the popular video footage of the explosion of the nuclear reactor building (at least for a long time).

If you just want to follow the critical news, I think this page on Kyodo News is useful. It just shows you the latest and the most urgent news headlines.

Naturally, Twitter is useful for getting a sense of what people are talking about. Apparently the Japanese people at the disaster sites used Twitter to report the locations of the fire.

If you can read Japanese, this page on Google is useful in getting a sense of what the Japanese people are talking about. (The English version of the same thing.)

Blogs I like: New York Times, Aljazeera, Guardian, and Wall Street Journal.

And, one of the best explanations of what’s happening to the nuclear reactors by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT.

Readings of radiation levels from different prefectures.

Among all the sensational articles, this one gives you a small dose of relief.