At breakfast this morning at our hotel, I ran into our Executive Director of Asian Operations Acey Kohrogi and our primary scout in Japan, Keichi Kojima and as you might imagine, all anyone can talk about is the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan.

Acey was up much of the night following the news and I can only imagine how hard this is on someone like KK, who isn’t home in Japan and has to follow all the coverage on TV. We also know former Dodger Takashi Saito is from the town where this hit and as you can imagine, it’s been impossible for guys to call Japan and speak to anyone right now.

Kuroda learned of the earthquake online first thing this morning and said he was shocked by the photos he saw. His family mostly lives in the West, but he has a lot of friends on the Rakuten Eagles, which are based in Sendai, where the damage appears to be worst.

Even though this is taking place on the other side of the world, it’s amazing that the impact can be felt in Southern California, where very large waves are expected to be hitting the coast.

For those of us who lived through the Northridge, Whittier or even the Sylmar earthquakes over the last 30 years or so, you can somewhat understand what the quake itself felt like but there’s simply no way to understand the sort of damage that has occurred there.

We are all hoping and praying that the worst is behind the people of Japan and that the process of putting back together their lives and these towns starts to get underway quickly.