Citizens Bytes: Canadians describe the Japan earthquake

A magnitude-9 earthquake, the biggest quake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, struck off the country's northeast coast Friday at 2:46 p.m. local time. It was followed by at least 50 aftershocks, some of them more than magnitude 6.0, and triggered a tsunami that swallowed homes, swept away cars and boats and forced people to scramble to higher ground.

Canadians living in Japan have been sending us their stories and their pictures. You can read their Citizen Bytes here:

Alex (who asked that is last name not be used) is a 14-year resident of Tokyo and a native of Saskatchewan. He was working west of Tokyo, near one of the busy trunk railways, during the earthquake.

Jeff Cadieux, a native of Markham, Ont., but now living in Niiza, Japan, says his daily life has continued virtually uninterrupted since the earthquake hit on Friday.

Philippe McKie is a Concordia University student in Tokyo on a student exchange. He was in a restaurant in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo when the quake occurred.

Christina Teng teaches English as a second language at a private elementary school in central Tokyo. When the earthquake struck, she went into emergency mode to help her students, many of whom could not go home because train service was halted.

Derek Cormier is a Canadian intern from the University of Manitoba working in Yokosuka, Japan, in the Greater Tokyo area. He was in the 10-storey Nippon Telegraph and Telephone building when the quake happened.

Stephanie Gormek, 27, is an assistant language teacher in Hasuda in the prefecture of Saitama in Japan. She is originally from Uxbridge, Ont. She shared her experience of Friday's earthquake with the CBCNews.ca Community team.

Matthew Meleg, of Harrow, Ont., works as an English teacher in Tokyo. Already hobbled by a broken leg, Matthew was cleaning up a classroom when the earthquake struck. 

Michael Seid, 21, is from Vancouver. He was in Tokyo on holiday when the earthquake hit.

Jonathan Woods is a nurse in Calgary, Alta. He and his wife, Moo, were in Tokyo en route to Thailand for a holiday when the earthquake struck.

Bob Iwami is a Japanese-Canadian who lives and works in Vancouver. He is a general manager of Japanese sales for a forest products manufacturer and travels to Japan every month to oversee the company's office there. He was in Tokyo when the earthquake struck.

Ian MacDougall is a Canadian that has been living in Tokyo since 1984. He is a freelancer that works in Japanese film translation.

Yuri Komuro, 30, is a Canadian working for an IT company in Tokyo. She has lived in Japan since 2006.