Neil Duckett

Yeah. The spooky thing about it was NHK announced right before the swaying began in Tokyo, “Now, an earthquake will begin. Please take caution,” causing my gf to freak the hell out.

Tohoku is certainly taking a beating with the earthquakes this summer.

I’m thinking of going to the NHK News Photographer Division at NHK Headquarters, to instruct the videographers in how to do proper camerawork. I will demonstrate by taking the cameraperson to a location where some tiles have fallen off a building facade due to an earthquake.
How it will be performed:
Step 1: Upon arrival, stand in place, and physically position the person’s head toward the damage.
Step 2: Gaze about 7 seconds. (A slow horizontal pan of the head is allowed.)
Step 3: Review. Answer any questions.

Note: It is highly likely the cameraperson will desire to zoom up close to broken building tiles or goods on a convenience store floor or broken glass on the ground.

I will illustrate the ineffectiveness of this technique by suddenly grabbing the camera person and rushing very, very close to a few broken tiles on the ground and then positioning the head of the videographer centimeters from the broken tiles.
And I’ll say: “Tiles. Fell off building. During quake. Broke into irregular shapes on ground. We understand.

If broken tiles are not available, goods on a convenience store floor, or broken glass on the ground are suitable substitutes for NHK Cameraman Training.

And here’s a tip for all TV news stations: showing items that have fallen on your desks in the newsroom is not an effective method of illustrating the power of the quake. Why? Because news rooms are usually messy! Judging by the video of your desks, I could not figure out what was damaged and what was just your usual mess.

Life NHK News Style

i can’t imagine how i’d feel to hear an earthquake being announced on speakers to everyone

I was sitting on an outdoor open air convenience on the island of Lombok in Indonesia when someone started to bang on the doors trying to get in. I was very sick at the time and could not get off the aforementioned convenience. Once I was able to stand up I jumped through the doors expecting to confront the would be burglar or the drunken tourist who had mistaken my bungalow for his but the culprit had moved on. Thinking he must have been a monster of a fella I took it upon myself to use my 100kg frame to attempt to move the building like he did without much success. Determined to fine the bugger I shot off down the path and came across a 5 foot nothing Japanese man with a wobble in his stride. Figuring him to be a lot stronger than he looked I went about providing a lecture as to why he should not shake peoples houses late at night. The poor frightened friendly tourist ran off into the night. I then went to the reception to report the incident to only be laughed at and told that it was an earthquake. How was I to know???

[...] Update: Check out the one from July 24th here. [...]

I’m uneasy about finding myself on the receiving end of a natural disaster (actually, I guess I can’t really be in the giving end of one, now can I…unless I eat a bunch of fried beans or something :\ ). I figure if the elements want to do me in, then that’s that. The closest I’ve come to an earthquake of any note thus far is when Seattle got hit by one a few years ago. I know that area is on a major fault line, but I got soooo complacent about it actually being struck by an earthquake.

There is a “Huge” earthquake on the way for Tokyo, It is overdue according to most scientists.