First of all, I wish to express the deepest sympathies and condolences to Japanese society who had the serious disaster due to the East-Japan Earthquake. My heart goes out to all those affected. We would like to discuss what we learned from the historical disaster occurring in Japan on March 11, 2011. No doubt that we live with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in our everyday life. We can say that ICT is one of the most essential utilities for everybody besides electricity and water. How can ICT help us as surviving tools in the digital era?
　Damages were affecting the buildings and many lives and creating panic not only to the Japanese but also to the people all around the world. However, one of the well-known Japanese traits is that they never give up and never lose hope - once they fail, they will soon get up or even get themselves better from any crisis. According to their history, we could see whenever any crisis hit to Japan, it acted like a major dose taking the country to run up and become one of the most powerful countries in the world. On the other hand, one may not agree to the statement mentioned above due to the current Japanese demography - the current numbers of working-age people are less than the past ones. Yet, we do believe in the Japanese from their unique discipline that has showed the people all over the world during the crisis.
　The impact that occurred with the automotive and high technology industry companies around the world was stopping manufacturing in Japan during the disaster aftermath, especially electronic companies that had the most impact from the disaster since Japan is a manufacturing base for semiconductors which contribute about one-fifth of the global supply. We can foresee a shortage supply from unbalancing with a high demand of smart phones and tablets this year.
　Not only the Japanese companies but also many multinational companies had to face the same problem. After suspending their production, paranoid symptoms in the semiconductor industry could be seen from falling down on the stock prices.
　The social media giant, Facebook, has released a map showing the distribution of the Japanese earthquake news around the world (Fig.1). The map is updated by searching the keywords such as “Japan”, “Earthquake”, and “Tsunami”, and then those keywords are put into the map according to its originating location. On the map, we can see that the keywords get updated several times from Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, the United States, Australia, and Thailand.
　On the other side of the world, American and Japanese students have collected data from the major social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. According to the collected incidents, they created a map in a form of texts, pictures
and videos showing where and what happened. The main purpose

Fig.1 World earthquake map showing the East Japan Earthquake (from Facebook)

　of doing this is to help the victims and the rescue teams to gain a better understanding of the overall situation. The students who created this application say that this web application can show helpful and useful information on the map; for example, when one saw a hospital fire or people getting stuck under the ruins, they could send this essential, helpful information to the cloud (Internet). The application will help to map this emergency information onto the corresponding location.
　Needless to say, the social media and Internet have obviously shown their significant, useful powerful tools to us. From the past events that occurred earlier in Africa and the Middle East to the current situation in Japan, Mixi, Japanese multi-billion dollar social media, and Twitter have played an important role to this crisis. Unreliable phones that could not be used in some places made the social media become the main channel for communication. The social media have been used to search for someone missing, updated situations and inform their safety through this media. The social media are just like a coin that has two sides. The source of information can be released to the public rumors intentionally or unintentionally. Thus, it is necessary to verify the information from trustable, reliable sources.
　Japan builds their ICT infrastructure very efficiently and professionally. We can see it at the real-time information still flowing to the Internet even with the critical situation. A Japanese business man in Tokyo told us that the mobile voice service could not be used; however, the mobile internet still worked well. The situation was expected to be caused by the intention of the operator which allowed the communication over the Internet to accommodate more people. When one’s cell phone did not work, it was normal to see people standing in line to use a public telephone in major cities.
　The incident to nuclear power plants caused the anxiety across the world. Handling with the rapidly spreading rumors about the radiation, the Japanese government has reported the measure level in Tokyo on website. This also shows the transparency and immediate response of information by using ICT.
　After the quake, thousands tweets in one minute bursted from Tokyo Twitter users. There were many organizations that used this social media to communicate with people in Japan. One of inevitable accounts was Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO). TEPCO used the social media to report the latest news from the nuclear power plant and informed electricity blackout. From our observation on their announcement, scheduled power cut-off cancellation was frequently seen in the social media. This action reflected the common discipline of the Japanese - helping the country to reduce power consumption. As a result, the energy was still enough for some zones.
　Another trustable source on the social media is the Office of Prime Minister of Japan who is using Twitter to communicate with people in Japan. Twitter, at first, provided only a Japanese version and shortly after the quake an English version was also created.
　Due to the uncountable help from more than hundreds countries and tens international organizations to Japan, the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Naoto Kan, has sent a message through the government website and the social media in both Japanese and English. We could also say that this is another way of representing a “Thank You” message via the Internet in the digital age.
　We can say Twitter is an appropriate social media tool in this kind of situation because of its quick, small, and wide spread in a very short period time. The short burst characteristic of each message will not harm the overall communication network even to the huge traffic generation.
　 YouTube is another example of the useful Web2.0 application in this situation. One of Japanese students studying in the United States was not able to contact her family in Japan via a traditional communication channel. Therefore, she kept monitoring data on the Net. Fortunately, she saw a clip on YouTube that captured her family staying safe there in Japan. This success came from collaboration between traditional media and digital media. Additionally, a special YouTube channel has provided the function of information exchange created by the victims through uploading their videos. Relatives and friends from all over the world can check them at the website (Fig.2).

Fig.2 Example of the emergency information exchanged and shared through Youtube

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