7 Days & Minutes (2013-09-16)

MONDAY: TYPHOON! 00:00:00
TUESDAY: HELLO 00:01:10
WEDNESDAY: No Pants! 00:02:00
THURSDAY: Tokyo Station 00:03:00
FRIDAY: FollowFriday - Nagi (bass) from DevilVi 00:04:00
SATURDAY: Emergency!!!!!! 00:05:00
SUNDAY: darc.jp 00:05:43

Take a look at my photography portfolio: http://www.darc.jp
follow Nagi: https://twitter.com/nagi_negi_yagi

Touhoku Golden Week Panoramas

Ofunato City

Kesenuma City

Rikuzentakata

Rikuzentakata

Ebisu circuit. Much ado about nothing

I went up to Ebisu circuit this past Friday as I had an itchy right foot that needed to be scratched. I had intended to get a full day’s practice in but by mid day I hung my arse off the track a bit too far and fell into a ditch.

Shots #86 A Room with a View

Golden Week Volunteering 2012: Part 2 –Revisiting Rikuzentakata

continued from here

After the first day’s work we took the first timers over to Rikuzentakata to get an idea of the level of devastation that the tsunami caused because in Ofunato, the amazing pace of the cleaning and reconstruction effort had hidden the scale of the damage. Things had not changed terribly much since I went in September, but for those who had not been back since last year golden week, they could see how much clearing had been done since…

Ofunato Volunteering - September 2011

We had a Friday public holiday last week in Japan which afforded me the chance to go back to Ofunato for a lightning volunteer trip with All Hands. I put the word out as I did before, but this time the call was answered by a fellow ALT in my city. We finished our work on Thursday, packed the loaner car I am currently driving (this is why) and headed north.

Ofunato Summer 2011 Volunteering – Water Closets and Free Candyfloss.

The Thursday and Friday saw me back with All Hands and onto a Job that taxed us both physically and mentally. We Had to remove 3 prefab bathrooms…

WITHOUT destroying the walls…

Ofunato Summer 2011– Chainsaws and FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday saw the re-opening of the City volunteer office and re joining them gave me a good chance to re-connect with some of the people I had met on my first trip in May…

Ofunato Summer 2011 Volunteering - Break Time

On Tuesday All Hands takes they day off. With the city volunteers still down for 1 more day it seemed like the perfect time to get that tourism that I had planned to get done done…

Ofunato Summer 2011 Volunteering - The SPPCF

After a good warm up on Sunday afternoon I was ready to go on Monday morning. I had chosen to go down to the marine factory site (A demolished refrigeration warehouse) to help The SPPCF – The Society for the Prevention of Prevention of Cruelty to Foam.

Ofunato Summer 2011 Volunteering. Getting started…eventually.

The next day (Sunday)I got up nice and early, got my shit wired and headed to the city volunteer center for my first day’s work…They were on holiday till that Wednesday. OH SHIT! I just spent 13 hours driving across North Eastern Japan to volunteer, only to find that I was going to waste a whole 3 days doing nothing. Needless to say I was displeased.

I decided to hit up the onsen and relax a bit and clear my thoughts. We had bathed there a few times on the previous trip but it was always at night and so I had never seen the surrounding landscape… Up winding road I drove, rounded a bend and it was like DAM!

The Silver Lining ~5 hit combo~

 

the juxtaposition of beauty amidst devastation in Touhoku.

 

Kesenuma, Miyagi ~ On the way

Continued from here...

We headed back to Gunma on the Thursday Public holiday at the end of golden week. Since we were so close and the news flashes from there were so vivid, we decided to go back via Kesenuma.

Rikuzentakata, Iwate ~ Crushing Reality

continued from here…

The heavy crews had been in the city and gathered up most of the debris into piles of sorts. They had also gathered all the cars they didn’t have any record of the owners for and placed them in a bit of a car purgatory.

Work in Progress

For my Lady’s’s litle brother. He likes construction vehicles. I am probably putting too much effort into it. But hey. I need to draw more :p

Rikuzentakata, Iwate ~ Holy Shit!

continued from here…

Ofunato looked like a destroyed city. Rikuzentakata was wiped off the face of the Earth.

This was the real eye opener for me…

Ofunato, Iwate, Volunteering ~ The Shock.

continued from here:

Up until this point, the Tsunami damage I had seen was bad but it was not the worst. The evening news had shown me otherwise but I had not properly seen it from ground level. There were glimpses off in the distance. and it looked bad but it felt like it was not my concern. After all I had stuff to do, and to be honest, I felt good doing it…

We went on a disaster tour of Ofunato… The reality of the situation was rather more horrific than anything you can truly describe, or for that matter take pictures of. “Force of nature” was given a whole new bone chilling definition, just 1km down the road.

Ofunato, Iwate, Volunteering ~ Into the Fray

continued from here

The first day had us zombified yet amped for duty. We headed out to the Ofunato City Volunteer Centre at the City offices and signed up.

Ofunato, Iwate, Volunteering ~ The Journey

So if you didn’t already know, about 2 months ago Japan was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake which generated a huge Tsunami that effectively destroyed the north east coast of the country and a Nuclear power plant on said coastline. Not to say the nuclear disaster isn’t a bad one. All disasters are disastrous. But it seems to be getting a disproportionately large amount of news coverage, both here and especially abroad.

Lets not forget that there was a tsunami… and it was big.

Time and Tide

Sorry for the delay. I was in Ofunato City (Iwate pref.) with some other Gunma ALTs doing some volunteer work. There will be a few posts on the subject as soon as I re-adapt to normality (which is taking a little longer than I thought.)