A Japanese woman who works for a community radio station in quake-hit Christchurch says its Japanese community is "finding it tough" following Friday's massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake in their homeland.
Naoko Kudo, 30, operations manager for PlainsFM, who presented a weekly show called "Japan Down Under" on the station before last month's Christchurch quake, told NZPA it was "it really hard" for Japanese people who went through the quake, and were now worried about family back home.
The Japanese community was hit particularly hard by the Christchurch quake, with up to 28 Japanese students thought to have been in the Canterbury Television building when it collapsed.
Ms Kudo, who has lived in Christchurch for four years, said many people who came there to learn English returned to Japan after the quake, only to experience the quake which hit Japan on Friday.
"Many Japanese people already evacuated and then many of them experienced the big earthquake again," she said.
She had been in contact with both her and her husband's families, who lived in Ibaraki Prefecture just east of Tokyo, and they were all safe.
"Our family is OK, my sister contacted me by email, on her iPhone, on the day," she said.
The level of shaking where her family lived was comparable to the Christchurch quake, she said.
Since the quake hit she had been glued to the television but said the coverage was too focused on the "shocking" aspects of the disaster rather than how everyday people were coping.
"All we want to know is how people are coping in the east areas," she said.
The main way she was keeping in contact with her friends was through social networking sites.
"I heard from my friend in Tokyo . . . and all of those businesses is back to normal and many buildings are not actually broken," she said.
Ms Kudo is yet to get back on the air following last month's quake, but the PlainsFM building had been given a green sticker and it may be able to return to airwaves when the cordon was reduced, possibly as soon as next week.
She said she wanted to get back on the air as soon as possible so she could provide support to the Japanese community, some of whom did not speak English well.
Those who were not proficient in English often did not pick up on public safety messages such as the need to boil water, she said.
"I want to get that message out," she said.
Since the February 22 quake she had spoken to many Japanese media and written a blog about life after the quake.
She said that like the media coverage of the Japanese quake in New Zealand, people in Japan only saw the shocking images of crushed buildings and had "no idea about everyday life".
