Entering Minamisanriku...

Well it's been more than a few days since my last post and part of the reason was that I was busy (especially over the weekend) but another part part of me just didn't want to write because I knew it would be depressing…  But enough is enough!

I knew beforehand that the main part of Minamisanriku town had been destroyed in the tsunami but the knowledge didn't prepare me for what I saw… 

The bus had been heading through a narrow valley road for several minutes before we found ourselves on an open plain with steep hills like walls on both sides.  Pine trees were growing very close together on the hills and that added to the walled-in effect even more.  All of a sudden the bus descended a few more feet down a hill and I saw that the front rows of trees on both sides were brown and dead.  A shiver ran down my spine as I realized that we had reached the tsunami zone.  The reason the trees were so visible was because the houses and other buildings were gone.  It probably wasn't so empty right after the tsunami but since then much of the rubble and debris has been taken away, leaving empty space.  I could still see the foundations where buildings had been.  Closer to the shore there was more rubble and garbage though much of it had been separated into piles.  I saw a pile of rubble about 10 feet tall with a pile of crushed cars next to it about the same height.  There were also piles of wires and metal.  Some areas still had unorganized debris.  I saw the remains of buildings on the ground with a few pieces of twisted metal sticking out, glowing in the sunlight.  I saw a car tire caught on a vertical piece of wood and wondered if a person had placed it like that as a grave marker or if the water had randomly placed it there.  I saw a small row boat sitting on a house's foundation and later I saw a car in almost perfect condition perched on top of a three story building.  The train tracks which had been visible to my left through most of the bus ride were suddenly twisted and cut off near the tree line, about 50 feet later they started up again and headed into a tunnel through a hill, I wondered if they would reappear on the other side.

 The tire on the piece of wood.

Abruptly the bus left the first area as the road curved north to hug the coastline.  We headed to higher ground and passed by many houses that were perfectly fine (it was a little disturbing how normal everything was).  There was a fancy hotel on the peak overlooking the ocean, I found out later that it had been used as an evacuation center and that mostly volunteers stay there now.  I saw the train tracks again to the right of the bus, they were on a raised railroad bridge about 20 feet off the ground and still intact (from what I could tell); it must have been a very scenic coastal ride in the past.

The bus headed down the hill and into what was once Minamisanriku center; it was pretty much a huge field of rubble with a few cleared roads here and there.  Before I came I would have expected that most of the cleanup would have been done at this point (but I suppose if one has literally thousands of pounds worth of rubble it will take a long time to clear).  I was slightly horrified to see that the road we were on seemed a bit flooded but the bus carefully went through the large puddles of water and headed for the only building in the area that had more or less survived the tsunami, the hospital.  Yesterday I asked if the hospital was still being used but I was told that the sea water had gone up to the fourth floor and the building is no longer stable.

One of the piles of burnable debris near the edge of town.

Apparently the reason that the road was flooded is that after the Great East Japan Earthquake and following tsunami the coastline dropped 1 meter in height and now during high tide the seawater often encroaches on the remaining roads.  You might ask yourself why the people in the area would want to rebuild in the first place with all the trouble they have gone through.  But this town has been here for generations and even though there are risks to living here I believe that one cannot give up one's home just because there are risks.  Any location in this world has associated risks after all!  You might ask yourself why I decided to accept my position at Minamisanriku too.  Well, while teaching a foreign language is a great challenge and a worthy task in its own right I also believe that helping a community and helping my fellow humans in their time of need is also very important.  I also know that I would have regretted not going just because of the location.

Anyway, this picture was actually taken in Kesennuma to the north of Minamisanriku and it's of a house that withstood the tsunami but was recently torn down for structural reasons (which is why the wood looks so fresh).  I couldn't help feeling sad about the forgotten stuffed animal though.