To Sendai Part 2 - Ishinomaki and Matsushima, Plus Remembrances of 3 Years Later [ GXR ]

The train outside Ishinomaki City, in Miyagi.

This post is a continuation of an older post I made last fall, about a trip a friend and I took to Miyagi, very near the center of the disaster area where the tsunami hit three years ago today. I was planning on posting this right afterwards, but the feel the second day was just so different I decided to wait until now.




One of many Buddhist statues stands watch. This one and a bunch of other statues stand near caves carved out of the rock at Zuiganji Temple (瑞巌寺) in Matshushima, a city mostly spared from the devastation that hit all around.




But even here the tsunami could still be felt, long after it had passed. This marker shows how far inland the water reached. Turn to the left.




That's the path the water took from the shore, just beyond the temple outer gate that you can see in the distance.

When the earthquake hit at 2:46pm on March 3rd, 2011, it caused a lot of damage, but the resulting tsunami that swept in as far as 10km in areas of Miyagi was just something no one was really prepared for. You can see videos of the water hitting on YouTube and elsewhere, and you can see pictures of the damage as well. I am not posting any here, out of respect for the nearly 20,000 people who perished or who were never heard from again that day.

The night before we decided to stay in Ishinomaki, of the harder hit cities in the path of the tsunami. Though you couldn't see much damage where we were - 2 1/2 years had passed since the disaster - what had been rebuilt was mostly temporary housing. Prefab buildings that looked like they were designed to last a summer, maybe a year at most, now were occupied by families, businesses and just about everything you can imagine in the city. Hell, even our hotel looked like it'd been built in an afternoon.

That morning when we woke up there was a train heading out of town south, but a few stops later we had to get out and quickly hop on a bus to take us the rest of the way. Along the path we saw sites of total devastation, where what had been whole neighborhoods, maybe even towns, were now barren without even any vegetation growing in. Other houses still stood and looked fine on the 2nd floor, but were just steel frameworks on the first.

The 1 hour bus ride to Matsushima was the quietest single period of time I think I've ever experienced in Japan. It was hard to see everything go by, and there are many images I don't care to relate here, but it was something that had to be seen, to be remembered.




Come around the corner to the Matsushima Bay, and everything is different. Yes, you still see some damage, but not a lot.




Matsushima, as you can see on Google Maps (I've marked the temple on the map there), is enclosed by a circle of islands. It is a beautiful place, one of the three sights in Japan they say you have to see, and thanks to the natural barrier it was mostly spared from the devastation around.

It wasn't all a sobering trip. We ate well - thanks to the storm we were forced to take refuge in a teeny little restaurant specializing in beef tongue, a local delicacy. And we drank well. And it gave us a chance to take stock in what we have. You never know when someone will be gone from your life, so it's important that you cherish the time you can spend together.

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I will finish this blog post with a few pictures I took in Fukushima on another trip.




This line of trees stands under the highway running just near Fukushima Station.




Here is an unused field, south of the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plants that melted down after the earthquake. Fukushima was once known for its rich harvests and especially farmers using the latest in natural growing techniques to grow with as little impact on the environment as possible.




Another field sits empty.

Three years after the nuclear disaster, what if anything has change?

Well for one, there is awareness. Thanks to crazies (like me) walking around with Geiger counters, people started noticing elevated levels of radiation. It wasn't Chernobyl, but it also certainly wasn't just something you could forget about. A lot of radiation was released, but there are efforts to remove topsoil and decontaminate. Children in the afflicted areas are being monitored for signs of thyroid and other cancers. And just this Sunday there was an anti-nuclear power demonstration outside of the Diet Building in Tokyo - and this time the media takes notice.

So things have gotten better.

But there are still a lot of people living in temporary housing like what we saw up in Sendai. And many more lives were lost of course, and families that can never fully recover.

But the rest do what they can to go on. And remember.

For more information about Zuiganji, check the Wikipedia page here.

Or to read about the first part of my trip, it's right here: To Sendai Part 1. I have written a series of articles about the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Check out my page: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, you can read the articles in any order you like.

For donations, you can check out the Japanese Red Cross Society. There are still a lot of people who need our support.