Tohoku

On 12 April 2012, we visited the Tohoku region as a day trip. This was fourteen months after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011. I spoke to a few people about the appropriateness of visiting as 'tourists' and was told "no problem, please do".

We caught the Tohoku shinkansen from Tokyo to Ichinoseki and then the very scenic Ofunato line to Kesennuma.

 The walk from the station to the waterfront was a little deceiving, because we saw a little damage as we got close, but it was only when we got right down to the sea that we began to see the scale of the damage. 

This was a sake brewery completely shifted on it's foundations.

As we walked further from the wharf area, the full scale of the destruction became real.

We walked around, astonished at the emptiness. The clean up had removed most of the building debris, although we still saw some touching personal items left behind.

A huge pile of destroyed cars was in one spot.

We stopped by the river and ate the lunch that we'd brought with us. Was pretty sombre. 2,033 people are dead or missing due the tsunami in Kesennuma.

When we walked back to the station we heard music and activity from one little street. A 'pop-up' shopping strip had been opened and quite a few people were browsing the newly opened stores. It was quite refreshing to see. I bought a t-shirt and some postcards.

We then caught a bus from Kesennuma to Minamisanriku. We had to bus, because the train line had been washed away by the tsunami.

It's clear that the coastline along here was once very beautiful, although now the damage wrought by the tsunami was evident the whole way. 

We got dropped off at what was the railway station. The bus driver looked worried when the foreign tourists got off in what was now effectively the middle of nowhere. A young couple got off the bus to check with us that we were going to be OK. 

We assured them that we knew the bus timetable and were going to leave later in the afternoon. The scale of destruction here was unfathomable.

Very few structures remained. The badly damaged hospital still stood, although the sea came through the building up to the ceiling of the third floor. 74 out of the 109 patients here perished.

One structure was the remains of The Bosai Centre which was the town's Civil Defence Centre. 30 people managed to make it to the roof of this building, however the sea came above it and ten people survived by clinging to the mast.We read about Miki Endo a 25 year old employee of the town's Crisis Management Department who was hailed as a heroine for continuing to broadcast warnings and alerts over a community loudspeaker system as the tsunami came in. She was credited with saving many lives. In the aftermath of the disaster, Miki was missing and was later confirmed to have died.

A huge mountain of debris, which was basically all of the town's buildings and contents was by the waterfront. Timber, steel and just general rubbish. The sad thing was the number of kids toys you could see.

We climbed the hill at the northern end of town where many people survived to see the town before we left. 1,206 people from Minamisanriku perished in the tsunami.

At the end of the day we caught a bus from the train station to Yanaizu which was the first station with a functioning rail line to catch the Kesennuma line to Furukawa to join the shinkansen back to Tokyo.

We got home around midnight. Everyone was physically and emotionally very tired, but felt that the day had been worthwhile.