Blogs from Ishinomaki, Miyagi, Japan, Asia

Double rainbow The bus brought us back to Kesennuma just after 4pm. As we had been travelling with the bus and the taxi, we decided to walk down to the harbour from the station. The weather in Rikuzentakata and Kesennuma on 13 October seemed to be a little unsettled; the weather kept changing from sun shining to showering all the time. While waiting for the return bus at Rikuzentakata, a grey sky had turned into a blue sky, and we could see a full-colour rainbow arch above the roof of the prefabricated buildings. At Kesennuma we too saw the rainbow while walking from the station to the harbour. It was a very clear seven-coloured rainbow, and as the time went by, it turned into a double rainbow appearing in the sky. We have seen ... read more

12/04/2014 Ishinomaki – Shizugawa (Minamisanriku) Today would be a deplorable mess with some half-arsed personal planning doused in a contingent of anti-social roads. Traipsing the Oshiku Peninsula regrettable. Situated just 45 miles away the Peninsula makes it the closest part of Honshu to the epicentre of the 2011 quake and again would make this one of the most heavily affected parts of the coastline. By the day it was now becoming easier to see why Miyagi was one of the most devastated prefectures. All around me new roads, bridges, tunnels, sea walls and debatably new housing being pieced together on a grand scale industrial effort. Inside just a couple of miles I would find myself inundated with herds of construction vehicles, some 20 to 30 would pass by the minute. My very presence an obvious hindrance, ... read more

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wasn’t sure quite what I’d see. It seemed like a typical rural station as the train rolled in, and still as I walked through the overpass and out the turnstile. Choosing to walk to my accommodation, again there were no immediate clues. Further on and the picture began to look not quite right. The occasional empty lot neatly cleared and obviously being readied for construction turned into regular gaps showing an increasing state of abandonment the further I went. Little did I know. I spent the next day wandering along the edge of the river leading out to Ishinomaki Bay. It was a lot to take in. It would be easy to forget that what I was seeing was the town already two and a half years down the ... read more

Another update about my time in Japan. I've been doing a lot of '-structing', both 'con-' and 'de-'. That is to say that I've been breaking and building things of late. More breaking than building though. Destruction is much more fun! >:) So that apartment we cleaned back in the Japan - Part 1 entry was actually the second floor. The first floor was very heavily damaged by the tsunami and we'd been asked to get rid of all the remaining floorboards, insulation and walls, leaving only the major support beams. It was a job for 3-5 people for almost a week. I worked on it each day and had a crowbar glued to my hand almost the entire time. It was a lot of fun and really satisfying when that beam you've been bashing and ... read more

Japan! So, after something like 25 hours flying I finally made it to Japan. Unlike the last time I came there was literally no line at immigration and it took all of three minutes to get through. Armed with the knowledge of which trains to take and how to get to my hostel I set off from the airport. Boring story short, I made it there fine, got some sleep, next day waited for the bus that would take me to Ishinomaki and played the 'in-transit-sleep-deprivation' game again on the way. So the name of the organization I'm volunteering with is called It's Not Just Mud (or INJM for short). Here is the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ItsNotJustMud and the website: http://itsnotjustmud.com/. The website has all the information about what they're doing/what they're about in a nicer format ... read more