Death toll from Hokkaido quake revised to 9

How can a place have 1.6 million households and be “sparsely populated”? Is Hokkaido the size of Uranus?

No, but it's pretty big, and it's sparsely populated.

Wow some serious ground liquefaction in that photo.

How can a place have 1.6 million households and be “sparsely populated”?

Having lived in Kansai and Hokkaido, I agree that most of the the north island is sparsely populated. 40% of the population lives in Sapporo, after all. That said, it depends what place you're using for the sake of comparison:

Tokyo: 844 sq miles, 13 million inhabitants

Hokkaido: 32,000 sq miles, 5 million inhabitants

Wyoming: 97,000 sq miles, 500,000 or so inhabitants

How can a place have 1.6 million households and be “sparsely populated”? Is Hokkaido the size of Uranus?

Tokyo = 6,150 people per square km.

Hokkaido = 72 people per square km.

Its all relative.

Btw, I live in Kitaku Sapporo city. We have power, water and gas. We were fortunate enough to not lose water or gas at all.

It seems easy if everyone was very unprepared for this event.

Many older Japanese people must be struggling. It's quite sad to see so many on the streets trying to buy food at convenience stores.

We hope everything will be okay from here on out. Tremors are okay, but losing power again would be a pain in the A.

Compared to most of the rest of Japan, here in Hokkaido it is sparsely populated -- especially outside the cities, only one of which (Sapporo) has over a million people.

Yeah, Sapporo itself is pretty large and dense, reminds me somewhat of Nagoya. I remember driving from Sapporo to the Shiretoko peninsula, which is on the eastern part of Hokkaido, and at some point I was driving through miles and miles of farmlands and forests, where the next conbini is something like 20 kms away, with absolutely no traffic. Coming from Honshu, Hokkaido is a completely different experience.

To Those Whose Lives Have Been Disrupted By This Disaster:

Please accept my heartfelt prayers for healing and strength during this difficult time.

The people of Hawaii are thinking of you.

Please take care.

Mahalo,

Mark Kazuo Bradley, Honolulu Hawaii

It has been a rough year for Japan. Hang in there everyone!