Oh my god! The horrible Tohoku earthquake has taught me a million new words, mostly because I had never had to deal with this before.

てんさい (天災)
With different kanji characters this means genius, but that has nothing to do with the topic ! With these characters, it means "disaster" like the earthquake up north.

ひさいち (被災地)
It hit bad here in Tokyo too but I guess you would say the main "area the disaster hit" was up north. It was horrible up there.

よしん (余震)
After the main earthquake we had many scary "aftershocks". In fact, we had two big ones just light night! Makes me nervous.

ぶじ (無事)
On TV a lot of people told their stories but wanted to let their family know they were "safe" (as in, I'm alright) and that they were ok, this word was like a mantra. It might start using it instead of 元気[げんき] when greeting people. heehee

ていでん (停電)
After the power plant problems up north, we have had problems here in Tokyo area too. We have had some "blackouts" (power outages) but most supposedly controlled.

ふそく (不足)
You might be able to guess from the kanji but we are having blackouts because there is "insufficient" (not enough) power right now.

せつでん (節電)
At work we are doing our best to avoid blackouts by instigating "brownouts" or energy conservation policies, or in other words turning out all unused lights at the branch. (not sure why, but I learned this word in Chinese today too!)

so many new words! And maybe more to come. Wild times in Tokyo-land.