Little bit of Shizu update
Her husband is from Sendai, which if you've been paying attention to the news out of Japan, you know is very close to the epicenter of the quake. Sendai is a fairly large city, and was in some respects luckier than other towns in that the main center of the city is on a hill. (I'm sure that's no consolation to the city's residents who live on the low ground closer to the coast.) The main chunk of the city was on high ground and not flooded, and is now serving as the primary "run here" point for evacuees and newly-homeless in the region.
Shin has likely lost an uncle, who would have been down in the area that is now just a swathe of mud and wreckage. His aunt (the wife of that uncle) is still MIA, but is unlikely to have been in the tsunami area, so they're holding hope that she just hasn't been able to check in, as communications are spotty in the region.
Shin's parents are okay, as their house was in the center of town, which was shaken but not stirred. (Yeah, making jokes is probably inappropriate. What can I say, that's how I deal with badness.) Everyone feared their house, which is old, would have fallen in the quake. As it turns out, being old was a good thing because it was loose and apparently "gave" in all the right ways to survive the quake. It didn't even have any broken windows. (Shizu says she will never again complain about how drafty their house is, because the panes being loose in the windows is probably what saved them.)
Shizu's family and friends are primarily in the south: Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe. They are now all accounted for and fine.
What I am greatly impressed by in the news is all the photos of people waiting calmly for their turn to enter a store or charge their phone. It reminds me how profoundly civilized Japan is.