I'm guessing you're talking about the Kobe earthquake?
My aunt, grandfather and grandmother lives in Tsuchiyama, no so far off from Kobe.
I recall receiving a phone call early morning (was at Hong Kong at the time) from my aunt, reassuring us that none of them were harmed.
The only thing they suffered were minor bruises and lots of broken glass, since my grandmother runs the local window store.
As for my grandfather, he was really lucky. He was working overtime at his Kobe office a day before the quake, and if he was unlucky enough that the date got shifted to the next day... needless to say, he probably would have died because his office building was wrecked.
I went back to Japan during the Easter holidays of the same year. We passed by Kobe on my grandfather's car and despite the effort to rebuild, we still saw patches of rubble and debris from fallen buildings. A lot of people had to wear masks too, since the dust from the rubble (asbestos?) was really thick.