In regard to the issue of how to access evacuation information, I got an extremely useful tip from Nicholas Choquette. Nicholas pointed out that if we use the Chrome browser (put out by Google), we can right click on almost any Japanese page and then see a translated version. When the Japanese seems really strange, we can easily access the Japanese on the original page to try to figure out what it means.
http://crisis.yahoo.co.jp/evacuation/43/
Thanks Nicholas!!
The Chrome browser also makes the page put out by the prefecture accessible:
https://www.anshin.pref.kumamoto.jp/osirase/index.cgi?type=1001
However, as I wrote before, I think the Yahoo page is much better.
By the way, the screenshots are current. Though Kumamoto City is now quite calm, calls for evacuation are still in effect for some parts of Kumamoto.
– Kirk