I seen lots of photos of the devastation, but haven’t seen any videos of the actual giant tsunami wave rushing inland. Do any exist?
i was gonna say: Watch CNN or FOX news. They show it every hour everyday…
but then i realized you MIGHT mean: from when the continental shelf was exposed to when the water (Tsunami) returned…
There IS a video of that… i saw it on one of the news channels…
a guy was walking on the ‘beach’ (exposed shelf) when smashed by the first wave… the wave was quite large in comparison to the person. Not sure if it was the 30’ variety or if the waves get bigger as the waves come in. Anyway, yes, videos do exist.
Ebaumsworld has some http://www.ebaumsworld.com/tsunami.html
Good downloads even with my dial up!
It did not have one like the OP was asking about and I have seen it once. They did not show the water receding, but it did show what looked like over 200 yards of ocean floor and some dude standing in the extended beach just watching the first wave crashing in - ain’t no way that cat lived.
This site has lots: http://www.asiantsunamivideos.com/
The one from Banda Aceh (near the bottom of the page) just defies belief.
I just watched that clip, Colophon. Words fail me.
I haven’t yet seen any still picture sequences taken from a webcam. These would be more likely to record the wave going out – the videos all start too late, as no one knew it was going to happen before the event.
My own webcam (on Lake Michigan, not the Indian Ocean) snaps a pic every ten minutes and I store them perpetually, so if anything happens I can go back and look at the archives. As long as the computer equipment survives the wave, that is.
So if the Great Lakes ever has a Tsunami, I’m ready. 
Being landlocked in Indiana, I didn’t have an appreciation for the power of the ocean until we visited the east coast. I was in awe of the strength of a few (small) waves as they struck a seawall. I can’t even fathom the power in a tsunami. The video clips are amazing, stunning, horrifying.
<hijack>
I realize you were being facetious, but there’s a similar phenomenon called a seiche that has been known to happen on Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes:
I just emailed an attachment to the webmaster to use on this thread.
The one I found scariest was third from the bottom in Colophon’s link, from Penang, the one with the big woman on the beach who was pretty obviously killed. It was scary because you can see why people might not have run away in time. The first waves didn’t seem all that dangerous, in fact, they were kind of cool. There wasn’t some 1000-foot-tall wave like in Deep Impact. The water just got… bigger. It was more like the tide just rising up twenty feet than a wave.
the great lakes get what the people in the area call “slosh.” lake erie tends to have the most due to it’s lack of depth.
seiche is the lake geneva term. much grander sounding. either term is correct for large enclosed bodies of water.
Possibly the most amazing video yet - Banda Aceh
That’s the one that finally gave me an impression of just what those poor people were up against. A wave breaking way into on the beach is scary and deadly, but that is just stunning in its horror and power. Like a gigantic freight train, hundreds of miles wide, just pushing relentlessly.
Good Lord. That was terrifying.
Jesus. There are no sufficient words. 