It is the morning after a 7.4 magnitude tremor,the strongest aftershock so far, located in approximately the same area as the devastating March 11 quake, rattled northern Japan. Most of the increasingly quake-blasé Japan shrugged it off.

Then in the late Japanese morning, a bit of good news from and for the automotive sector. Toyota Japan will re-open for business on April 18.

According to Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco, Toyota will produce vehicles at all Japanese vehicle-production facilities (including Hino and Daihatsu) from April 18 to 27. On Wednesday, April 20, Toyota will take a break, to continue making cars from the next day through the 27^th. Production will run at about half the normal volume. The particularly good news is that Toyota’s subsidiaries in the disaster-stricken Miyagi and Iwate prefectures will also re-open.

After the 27^th, all plants will be closed for one week in observance of Golden Week (or Goruden Wiku, as they say in Japanese – who said it’s hard?) At that point, Toyota will take a hard look at the parts situation and take it from there. In the meantime, the parts situation has improved. Ten days ago, Toyota was out of 500 different parts. By now, that number has shrunk to 150, says Nolasco.

The other bit of good news: TEPCO, the beleaguered Tokyo power company, decided to stop the rolling blackouts that turned power off for three hours a day. Blackouts are not needed because “more companies and consumers cut back on electricity use,” writes The Nikkei [sub].  That could change quickly as industrial users go back on-line.

Now for some bad news: The Japanese government ordered industrial and private users in TEPCO’s large service area to cut power consumption by up to 25 percent in the hot July through September months. Large commercial users must cut down by 25 percent. Smaller commercial users must conserve 20 percent. Private users must reduce electricity use by 15 to 20 percent. This will get interesting.