Friday was a dark day in Japan. A massive earthquake struck Japan at 2:46pm and life here changed forever. While the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks gave us quite a scare in downtown Tokyo, where our office is located, everyone escaped unscathed. Now that we’ve had the weekend to reflect on the situation, we’d like to give a shout out to a few of this weekend’s unsung heroes and also share our experience with you.

First, let’s talk about Skype. At a time, when one would pay any price to know about their loved ones, Skype provided this service for FREE. Of course, the 3G network remaining intact was instrumental. Amplifying the importance of the service Skype provided was the fact the Japanese telephone system crashed right immediately after the initial earthquake. In addition to not being able to contact loved ones by telephone, texting was also rendered unusable. Co-workers with telephone company e-mail addresses suffered long delays in mail delivery. And co-workers without smart phones were left with few options to contact loved ones.

Once our nerves calmed, everyone (and we mean, EVERYONE) pulled out their cell phones to get news and contact loved ones using Skype chat. Gmail for initial contact to inform people to log on to Skype was a popular pattern, but Skype was the main 2-way communication tool in the aftermath of the earthquake emergency. With the trains not running any many people stranded overnight far from home (including a few well known JPOD hosts), they were able to contact their loved ones to let them know of their plans via Skype’s call and chat services. Today, Skype Japan announced that it is providing free WiFi and Skype Credit for all customers in Japan. How awesome is that?

Social Media has also played a HUGE role this weekend and continues to play an important role during crises around the world. Not only were we able to tweet and update friends and family on our status within minutes of the first earthquake, but we’ve also been getting very important news via these channels as well. We were greeted with links to the Blackout Schedules in our area after logging into Facebook this morning. And our eyes have been glued to Twitter to get up to the minute news, earthquake alerts and information. For all our non-Japanese speaking staff, we’ve heard that this was their #1 way of staying informed. To help provide support to English speakers in Japan, we have also been tweeting important information through the JapanesePod101 account.

Google has also done it’s part to help by creating a Crisis Response Page. Along with posting important and credible post-earthquake and tsunami information in both Japanese and English, they’ve launched a Person Finder application where messages can be posted for missing loved ones. We hope that this service has helped reunite missing loved ones in the devastated areas.

We’re so thankful for all of these services during this dark time in Japan. Every little bit counts. We’re even more thankful for the self-defense forces, medical teams and relief workers saving lives in Northern Japan, where the biggest damage was done. We ask that you continue to keep Japan in your thoughts as this looks to be a long recovery.

So just to recap, during emergencies these were the most useful tools for us:

Skype – 2-way communication
Twitter – real-time information on events and recommended travel routes
Facebook – status updates for loved ones
g-mail – for reliable e-mail delivery
Google news and information