Robin Kelly thought getting a room upgrade at the Tokyo Hilton was great, until Friday afternoon when the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan. On cell phone video Kelly shot you can hear him saying, "Just had a massive earthquake. The whole place is rocking."
"At first it was this low groan coming up the building," Kelly recalled, "then it starting to shake and then it got more and more and the whole building started to sway."
Following the initial quake Kelly reached for his cell phone and recorded the next two aftershocks that shook the skyscraper he was in and countless others across Japan.
"Literally every 5 or 10 minutes it was another aftershock," Kelly said, "Just trying to get to sleep at night with the building just groaning and creaking it was unnerving. Definitely didn't get much sleep the first night."
Robin Kelly, who works for a software company, regularly travels to Japan and says he's felt earthquakes before but nothing like this. He said the people around Tokyo looked dazed as they tried to soak in the enormity of the tragedy to the north.
"You could see this look of dread and somberness on people's faces," Kelly said.
At a convenience store near the Hilton where Kelly was staying he said most shelves were bare with little left, "Everyone was still lining up waiting nicely to pay for their products and I was thinking to myself in the U.S. people wouldn't be saying excuse me as you're scrambling to get the last bag of chips."
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Kelly made it back to the United State on his scheduled flight on Monday. He said that he's happy to be home with his family and friends but , "I almost felt bad leaving because I have lots of friends and colleagues over there who are still going through this."
