My father-in-law works in Tokyo, but lives in Kamakura. He wrote us a long email about his journey home. Because trains were not running, the only option was to walk the 60+ kilometers home. All along the way, he saw people finding places to sleep in bars, stores, even 7-11s. All of them were full, so he could only keep on walking. Eventually, he found a bar that had room for him to come and sleep on the floor, so that he could continue his journey home in the morning. There was no food on the shelves of any store, so people had to share what they had with each other.

Allowing people to sleep in the Apple stores must have been incredibly important to the staff. God knows how they might have fared otherwise.

Author mentions nuclear/acid rain, there are no reports of this. I'm following NHK as well as more lucid western stories and all of them have the Fukushima reactors as worst case not as bad as Three Mile Island, let alone Chernobyl.

For English information about what's going on, there's:

http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/feature/2530/japan-earthquake...

http://gakuranman.com/great-tohoku-earthquake/#live

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/japan_quake/

http://twitter.com/_niten/tokyo-disaster-info/members (list I made)

It's a little bizarre how people are either 1) upset at Apple for not doing more 2) expecting all companies to do something like this, thus this isn't exceptional.

Addressing point 1 first; there's still time for them to do more. Not only that, but why should private companies be obligated to fund a nation in times of crisis? Sure, it's great when they do, but they already DO pay for this in the form of taxes. Apple is a company; their primary obligation is to their shareholders: their business is business.

Now for point 2: see point one. This is exceptional, and this is really neat. This isn't just some donation of funds to another fund; this was a mandated relief effort in the face of an actual crisis. And it showed (whether or not you think it sincere) that Apple cares. I can't be anything but happy that I support such a company.

The real story here is how valuable and important free internet access points are. We should all support companies and individuals that provide free network access.

This is of course what Apple (and any other company) _should_ have done in such a situation, but they sure deserve some recognition for actually doing it.

This is just basic human decency and I am sure Apple is not the only company doing this. I don't think it's a good time for some guy from Silicon Valley to praise some entity from Silicon Valley for doing great things. Reminds me of Twitter getting all the praise for revolutions while people were dying. Let's praise them when they spend some of their billions on earthquake relief.

Is this materially different from how any other company in Japan reacted?

Meanwhile, Microsoft donates $2million (http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2011/03/14...), and nobody notices. I don't mean "oh, poor Microsoft" - it's just interesting that certain kinds of generosity are appreciated more than others.

The part about camping out in the Apple Store reminded me of "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorow.

http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_...

I find this bit really interesting:

"You know how in disaster movies, people on the street gather around electronic shops that have TVs in the display windows so they can stay informed with what is going on? In this digital age, that's what the Tokyo Apple stores became."

While doubtless unintentional, this sounds so much like PR as to seem tasteless.

It's good to see people helping each other. This sort of thing is happening all over Japan, though, not just at any one company. I hope that people encourage each other to do more of this sort of thing.

That said, I was impressed by Google's approach, even though they're not a Japanese company. They set up a page to give people the latest news on the disaster, made a widget to help people donate to the Japanese Red Cross, powered a person finder to help people locate their loved ones and linked people to all kinds of other official resources so that they know when they're expected to ration power, etc.

It's linked from their home page. Honestly, I didn't notice it for a long time, because I always search straight from my browser.

Sure, it's just a story of basic human decency, the kind we see in all sorts of crises.

But stories are a big way that cultural values are transmitted and reinforced. The latter is important.

Well, this is good, but Apple's bigger contribution is allowing donations via iTunes. They have over 200 million credit card numbers on file - that's powerful.

I know little of Apple or of Japanese business morals/etc.

I wonder, is this an Apple thing, or a Japanese thing, or an Apple Japan thing? Does it lean any particular way? Not that it matters. Good people doing good things. I would be interested in commentary, though.

For anyone interested we formed a global group on Facebook called iHope for Japan http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_201249473238509...

The idea is to persuade Steve Jobs donate to the relief effort in Japan. The release of the iPad2 just about coincided with the earthquake/tsunami. What a great opportunity to donate a portion of each iPad2 to sale to Japan. Very positive publicity and who knows they may sell more because of it.

Tokyo's gripped with panic and the markets are essentially experiencing a flash crash (http://e.nikkei.com/e/app/fr/market/nikkeiindex.aspx) and the French Embassy is warning that radioactivity could reach Tokyo in 10 hours (https://twitter.com/#!/reuters/status/47485505813757952)

This story made me feel good.

Funny how every comments from the link are "Wow awesome APPLE is amazing", talking about the company as a whole when it's only a single store story. Yes, what this they made is great, even though it's what every other store should have made in their situation. Just felt like pointing that fun fact out.

> with the phone [...] lines down

and

> hundreds of people were swarming into Apple stores to watch the news on USTREAM and contact their families via Twitter, Facebook, and email.

Why is the internet at the apple store up when apparently the phonelines are down?

Honestly everyone needs to get over themselves and their opinions on "roles" in this terrible time.

This was an inspiring story coming from a truly frightening and terrible situation.

Pretty awesome stuff!

Apple did far better then Microsoft atleast.

http://www.geekwire.com/2011/bings-japan-tweet-tasteless-mar...

Ycombinator is such a massive Apple fanboy hangout these days.

I hate being "that guy" but I find it very sad that we've reached a point where we're expected to praise companies just for being staffed by humans capable of basic empathy in an unimaginably horrific crisis.

It is nice that they did this and all but is it really especially noteworthy?

Give me an update when Steve Jobs donates a little bit of his money to the relief effort, (or, really, ANYTHING...) until then I don't really see what this has to do with Apple as a whole.

He mentions that his free wifi was the only way to get access to the outside world. I don't know about Softbank (the only provider with iPhones in Japan), but my 3G with Docomo was not disrupted at any point during the crisis. Making calls was difficult or (usually) impossible, but network access was always there. This is in Tokyo.

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Thats it? really? No pledge of money to help repair?

If thats all Apple does in response its extremely weak.