Japan.

"This is the kind of earthquake that hits once every 100 years," said restaurant worker Akira Tanaka.

I was with my mother in Toronto when I had first heard about the earthquake in Japan, however, I became still when the news hit me. I felt disappointed in myself on how I only found out hours later. I though that I should have known earlier… but we were to busy having our girls day out for my 18^th birthday. I felt selfish… here I was shopping in Toronto while all these innocent people were suffering from a natural disaster. I still think about it to this day, however, now I make sure I check the news everyday – I even have BBC and CTV on my iPhone to always keep me updated.

"The incident in Japan is one to never go unnoticed. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland in the northern part of the country and set off warnings as far away the west coast of the United States and South America. Recorded as 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the most powerful quake ever to hit the country.

As the nation struggled with a rescue effort, it also faced the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl; explosions and leaks of radioactive gas took place in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that suffered partial meltdowns, while spent fuel rods at another reactor overheated and caught fire, releasing radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Japanese officials turned to increasingly desperate measures, as traces of radiation were found in Tokyo's water and in water pouring from the reactors into the ocean. A month after the quake, nuclear officials put the crisis in the same category of severity as the Chernobyl disaster. In May, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who had been criticized for showing a lack of leadership, said Japan would abandon plans to build new nuclear reactors, saying his country needed to “start from scratch” in creating a new energy policy that should include greater reliance on renewable energy and conservation"

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/japan/index.html).