Experience in the month after the earthquake  A good place to start is what happened in the financial markets, the area I am familiar with. The earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on Friday, March 11. At the time, I was being briefed by staff in preparation for the Monetary Policy Meeting scheduled to be held at the beginning of the following week.
Even in Tokyo, about 250 miles away from the earthquake epicenter, the shaking from the earthquake was the strongest that I had ever experienced and continued for more than two minutes. The earthquake’s magnitude at the epicenter was 9.0, which makes it the largest on record in Japan, and the energy released was enormous (Chart 1).