{"id":84,"date":"2021-08-23T18:52:52","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T18:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/ishinomaki\/"},"modified":"2021-08-23T20:16:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T20:16:51","slug":"ishinomaki","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/migrated-posts\/ishinomaki\/","title":{"rendered":"Ishinomaki"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(It\u2019s been a week without much internet access for me, and without much time to write, for that matter.\u00a0 Now that I\u2019m back in Sendai I hope to upload a lot over the next couple of days, so check back often!)<\/div>\n
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(Also, big thanks to Dave Tatem for the technical assist on the entry below \u2013 it would have been imageless without his help!)<\/p>\n

Takumi<\/strong><\/p>\n

I arrived in Ishinomaki shortly before noon, via the \u201cexpress bus\u201d from Sendai.\u00a0 The \u201cexpress bus\u201d takes a little over 90 minutes for a trip that would probably have taken 60 back before the quake and tsunami.\u00a0 The highway to and roads in Ishinomaki are crowded with dump trucks and other vehicles involved in the relief work, giving a city of 160 thousand the traffic problems of a city at least twice as large.<\/p>\n

Takumi called me as soon as I arrived, to find out where the hell I was and remind me that I was supposed to call him before leaving Sendai.\u00a0 Five minutes later he was at the station and we were on our way to lunch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It had been 19 years since I had seen Takumi. \u00a0We met during my first stay in Japan, when I was an exchange student at Miyagi University of Education.\u00a0 Due to a sense of overconfidence in my height and athletic abilities, I joined the basketball team at MUE, only to realize that even though I was taller than almost everyone on the team (with the exception of Takumi, who is my height), they could all do wondrous things with the ball like dribble, pass, and shoot \u2013 none of which I could do reliably.\u00a0 Still, in spite of the fact that my basketball skills barely improved over the year that followed, and I only played a total of five minutes in an actual game, I didn\u2019t regret the decision to join the team for a moment.\u00a0 By doing so, I met Takumi.\u00a0 In spite of the fact that I often found his Ishinomaki accent nearly indecipherable \u2013 especially during that first year in Japan, when even the standard language was hardly within my grasp \u2013 we hit it off well.<\/p>\n

Even later, when I returned to MUE for graduate school, Takumi and I would get together for drinks with other members of the team from time to time.\u00a0 Everyone had graduated by then, of course.\u00a0 Takumi was teaching at a junior high school in his hometown of Ishinomaki by then, just as he is now.\u00a0 Other guys, like Fujigaki and Komatsu were teaching at different grade levels in different cities in Miyagi.\u00a0 But despite the logistical problems work and life in the \u201creal world\u201d produced, we got together fairly often.\u00a0 All three came to my wedding, and I went to most of theirs \u2013 at least for the ones who got married before I graduated from MUE and went back to America.\u00a0 The last one of these basketball weddings I attended, in fact, was Takumi\u2019s.\u00a0 It was the first and last time I would meet his wife Yoshiko.<\/p>\n

After that, we lost touch over the years, which was entirely my fault.\u00a0 Then March 11th<\/sup> happened.\u00a0 When I saw the photos and video footage from Ishinomaki, the realization that Takumi and his family were probably somewhere in all of that filled me with panic and dread \u2013 even though I had not done a good job of keeping in touch, I suppose that like most people I always figured that things would be going well for him, and that getting together with him again would be as easy as making the trip up to Tohoku anytime I happened to be in Japan.\u00a0 The images from Ishinomaki shattered this piece of self-comfort.\u00a0 Mike Bourdaghs, a mutual friends and my senpai<\/em> from Macalester\u2019s exchange program with MUE, was frantically searching for Takumi from his home in Chicago.\u00a0 Thanks to Mike\u2019s dogged pursuit of word on the missing persons\u2019 pages on Google, after a few days, we got some news \u2013 but mixed news, at best: Takumi, his son, and his mother were alive and unharmed, but his father didn\u2019t make it through.\u00a0 Furthermore, his wife and daughter were still unaccounted for.\u00a0 A few days later, we heard from the same source that the bodies of both had been recovered.\u00a0 If there was any comfort to be drawn from the news, it was that at least their bodies were discovered close to one another, around the second floor of their family home, which had been washed 200 meters away from where the house had stood.\u00a0 It is human nature to try to salvage some sort of comfort from suffering: I would like to think that the proximity of their bodies indicates they were together to the end.<\/p>\n

I simply can\u2019t imagine the kind of pain Takumi must be going through in the face of such a loss.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried to put myself in his position many times since learning of these deaths, but keep coming back to the realization that it would probably crush me.\u00a0 If it had crushed Takumi, or some part of him, though, his voice didn\u2019t betray it.\u00a0 Instead, there was a kinds of open toughness \u2013 a surprising resilience \u2013 that came, perhaps, from grappling with the same question his mother asked herself: \u201cnan datta dar\u014d<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0 Since it\u2019s a phrase that can be interpreted many ways, let\u2019s rephrase it this way: Why did this have to happen?\u00a0 There is no way to answer this, of course.\u00a0 In the course of the few hours I spent with Takumi on this first meeting in 19 years, though, what I think I saw was acceptance of what was unanswerable.<\/p>\n

The person who met me at the station was an older man than the Takumi I remembered of course \u2013 noticeably grayer and a bit heavier \u2013 although I\u2019m sure he had the same impression of me, too.\u00a0 We had lunch at a sushi shop near the station that had only recently reopened for business, and took the time to catch up \u2013 at least to the extent that one can in such a situation \u2013 while we ate.\u00a0 I told him about my life and the family I now have (he knew my wife in college, but I had neglected even to inform him of the birth of our son).\u00a0 We talked about other people on the team, what and (more importantly) how they were doing now.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to say anything that would force him to talk about all that he had lost \u2013 because at this point I still thought it would be an extremely painful topic for him \u2013 nor did he bring it up.<\/p>\n

Which is why it surprised me that after lunch he asked if I\u2019d like to see where his home in had stood.\u00a0 As we crawled through the Ishinomaki traffic, Takumi recounted for me what it was like for him during the first few days after the tsunami.\u00a0 He was at work when the quake struck.\u00a0 His school \u2013 Watanoha Middle School \u2013 stood less than 100 meters from the ocean.\u00a0 The shaking seemed to last forever, and it was the bad kind of shaking \u2013 an up-and-down jolt, rather than a side-to-side sway.\u00a0 After it subsided, he headed outside to the school athletic ground in front of the building (on the opposite side from the sea), which was the standard earthquake evacuation protocol.\u00a0 He recalls that there was already concern about a tsunami, but the vice principal trotted out to the other side of the building to take a look and somehow came to the conclusion that there was nothing to worry about (I\u2019ve heard of similar misjudgments on the part of many people in the area, due to the fact that just two days before a strong \u201cforeshock\u201d hit the area, but produced only a very small tsunami, despite the issuance of a warning).\u00a0 At this point, someone who had remained in the building and turned on a portable radio heard the tsunami warning \u2013 including the information that an enormous wave had been spotted barreling toward the coast.\u00a0 \u201cTsunami!\u00a0 Coming right at us \u2013 get out of there!\u201d\u00a0 Takumi frantically climbed the stairs to the roof, with the water rushing into the floors below him as he climbed.\u00a0 It rose incredibly rapidly; at its peak height it seemed to Takumi that he could have reached down and put his hand into the water, even though he was four floors above the ground.\u00a0 He recalled that the water was black due to the tremendous amount of sand, silt, and mud it carried with it from the ocean floor.<\/p>\n

The tsunami hit the Watanoha area at around 3:30pm, 45 minutes after the quake and about an hour after the school day had ended.\u00a0 Many students were probably still on their way home at the time.<\/p>\n

At about this time we turned off of the main highway through Ishinomaki onto a side road that took us south, toward the ocean.\u00a0 This was the entry point to the Mitsumata neighborhood, where Takumi and his family had lived, less than 200 meters from the water\u2019s edge.\u00a0 As we headed in, the signs of destruction became increasingly graphic: shattered windows on the first floor of buildings rapidly gave way to blown-out walls and then to homes that had entire sections of the first two floors torn away.\u00a0 In some cases, second floors defied architectural common sense, hanging precariously over parts of a first floor that no longer existed.\u00a0 This was much worse than I had seen anywhere up to this point; even Watari, for all of its damage, had at least been cleared of the most lurid evidence of the tsunami\u2019s destructive power.\u00a0 People who could remember what the place had looked like before were awe struck by the absence of what they knew should be there; but for the uninitiated, the clearing of the unsound structures had left a landscape of mostly foundations.\u00a0 Mitsumata was different.\u00a0 Here, it appeared that things were left just as they had been after the waters pulled back \u2013 as a testament to the destructive force of the tsunami \u2013 although Takumi later assured me that the situation in Mitsumata had improved greatly since he first came to search for his home and family in the days after the disaster.\u00a0 At least much of the largest rubble had been carted away.<\/p>\n

We entered a sudden clearing \u2013 or rather an area remarkably void of anything higher than two meters \u2013 and Takumi turned right onto an even smaller road and slowed the car.\u00a0 \u201cThis one \u2013 right there!\u201d he exclaimed as we pulled up along side a plot on a corner, \u201cIt was here \u2013 the gate with the name plate is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We got out of the car and passed through what was left of the front gate.\u00a0 Stepping up from the entranceway, we stood in what had been the living room, near the front of the house.\u00a0 It had been a compact, single family home, the kind of \u201cmy home\u201d setting that most Japanese adults with children consider to be the ideal environment in which to raise their families and spend the years that follow.\u00a0 The living room still had planks across its corner of the foundation, although the tatami mats were nowhere in sight.\u00a0 Since the rest of it was just a series of crossing support beams, Takumi recreated the layout for me, pointing to rooms that no longer existed: \u201cThe toilet was here, the bath here, then the sink, and the kitchen and dining room were over there.\u201d\u00a0 He explained this with schematic efficiency; the layout of the home he had entered so many times before obviously still engraved upon his perception of the physical space before him.\u00a0 The difference between what it must have looked like then and what it had become over the course of a few minutes on a cold March afternoon could not have been greater.<\/p>\n

We surveyed the wasteland around from the platform of his living room.\u00a0 The water here had reached a height of six or seven meters. \u00a0Takumi pointed toward two houses with blue tarps covering the gaping holes in their facades where windows, doors, and walls had once been.\u00a0 In the most matter-of-fact way imaginable, he told me that right in front of those houses \u2013 over 200 meters from where we were standing \u2013 was where the tsunami had deposited the second floor of his house.\u00a0 In the midst of the wreckage piled everywhere, he said it took him twelve days to find it.\u00a0 Here he found what he had come in search of: the bodies of his wife and daughter.<\/p>\n

I found it extremely hard to imagine what that must have been like for him: twelve days of anxiety followed by crushing despair.\u00a0 What struck me even more, though, was the way he could now so calmly, almost off-handedly describe those events for me.\u00a0 Even at a distance of four months, I have serious doubts that I could maintain the same composure in recalling what had happened.\u00a0 There is a dimension to the kind of loss that my friend suffered that is beyond the ability of those haven\u2019t faced similar circumstances to fully comprehend.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t say that Takumi has found a way to put it behind him, because I know that is not what is going on here.\u00a0 He lives with this loss every day.\u00a0 But the resilience comes from somewhere, perhaps from the context of what it means to be alive in Ishinomaki after March 11, shared among those who were not taken by the tsunami.\u00a0 The experience of loss on such a grand scale \u2013 a thankfully rare occurrence \u2013 became a new kind of normalcy in Ishinomaki.\u00a0 Perhaps this spares those who grieve from feeling so isolated in their grief \u2013 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 If I had ever encountered fortitude, though, this was it.<\/p>\n

Later, after I settled into the routine of volunteer work, I heard similar impressions voiced with a similar sense of bewildered respect from other volunteers.\u00a0 The survivors they talked to all seem to have attained the same kind of fortitude.\u00a0 \u201cRight here is where we found my brother\u2019s body,\u201d or \u201cmy mother never made it further than around here, probably\u201d; all said in a tone that betrayed nothing of the shock and dismay that must have come with the discovery, or the deep sense of loss that must still linger.\u00a0 These people are tough; circumstances have given them no choice but to become so.\u00a0 But I\u2019m sure that a community of loss in the face of disaster made the transformation possible \u2013 although it couldn\u2019t have been easy.<\/p>\n

After looking at the ruins of his home, we toured the ruins of his neighborhood.\u00a0 I asked him how long it took before the roads were cleared of debris.\u00a0 This was a question that I had wanted to ask someone living in an area that had been hit by the tsunami for some time, ever since seeing pictures of the immediate aftermath, in which it appeared as if someone had plowed the roads to make them passable.\u00a0 Takumi told me that this was not the case: although smaller roads were choked with rubble and there were some sections of Ishinomaki in which even the large roads required clearing, for the most part the tsunami left major roads unobstructed.\u00a0 As the water rushed into the city, roads acted like canals, channeling the current in a way that pushed debris off to the side.\u00a0 When the water drew back and the direction of the current was reverse, the clearing effect was the same: meaning that the tsunami left the city shattered, but surprisingly open to traffic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In a similar way, some parts of Takumi\u2019s neighborhood were spared the kind of complete destruction that his home and those around it suffered \u2013 although not by enough to leave them fit for habitation.\u00a0 An area 100 meters to the east still had homes standing, albeit severely damaged.\u00a0 A large factory stood between this area and the shore, and acted as a wave break, thus shielding the homes behind it from the pulverizing force of the first wave.<\/p>\n

It was into this part that we now drove.\u00a0 To the unaccustomed eye, it would appear that little if anything had changed here since the tsunami, despite the presence of work crews.\u00a0 Because the full-force current of the tsunami did not pound this section of the neighborhood, massive amounts of debris rode in on the water, to be deposited in the streets and between the houses when the water receded.\u00a0 This all had to be cleared before work on the homes could commence.\u00a0 In one area, Takumi showed me a reminder of what things had looked immediately after the disaster:\u00a0 Three cars piled chaotically between two houses, as if they were toy cars dropped there by an enormous hand.\u00a0 It comes up at around the 4:40 mark in the following clip:<\/p>\n

The neighborhood was so changed that Takumi found it hard to figure out which street to take to get to this spot, despite the fact that this was not very far from his house \u2013 an area that he passed through at least twice a day commuting to and from work.\u00a0 In spite of the damage, though, there were signs that people were already living on the second and third floors of some structures.\u00a0 Technically they were not supposed to, as this entire area was condemned, and the central government has a plan to buy all the land \u2013 including Takumi\u2019s plot of it \u2013 and convert it to non-residential use.<\/p>\n

We left Mitsumata and headed along the coast to Saik\u014dji, the Buddhist temple where the ashes of Takumi\u2019s ancestors and relatives were interred, and where those of his father, wife, and daughter were soon to be.\u00a0 The trip took us through more scenes of destruction, evincing the frightening power of the tsunami.\u00a0 A bulldozer lay on its side on a plot of land where houses once stood.\u00a0 Takumi told me that before the tsunami it had been parked 100 meters south of this spot, along the shore.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In front of the temple we came upon a large group of volunteers, gathered to get their instructions for the day from the head priest.\u00a0 Volunteers are ubiquitous in Ishinomaki.\u00a0 As I prepared to contact the Japan Emergency Network (the organization I chose to volunteer with) I stumbled upon a page in the Ishinomaki City website that listed all the relief groups that had done work in the city at some point or another.\u00a0 There were well over 200.\u00a0 In addition to these, the city government had also established an office to make it possible for people to volunteer directly through the city\u2019s auspices.\u00a0 The relief organizations generally take care of work that involves the use of tools, such as sludge and debris removal, whereas those who volunteer with the city usually help with serving the needs of those living in the evacuation shelters.\u00a0 I have no idea what the average number of volunteers in the city on any given day might be, but it would be interesting to find out.\u00a0 I know from correspondence with folks at JEN that weekends and holidays seem to be particularly busy; many people from Tokyo use such times to make the trip up to volunteer for a day or two.\u00a0 A heartening thing to consider.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With their work orders received, the group dispersed into the temple grounds.\u00a0 Today\u2019s detail appeared to be cleaning the sludge and rubble deposited by the tsunami out of the graveyard in from of the temple.\u00a0 (The tsunami made it just far enough inland at this point to damage the floor of the temple\u2019s main hall, but otherwise the structure was sound.)\u00a0 As one of the volunteers approached us, Takumi thanked him for his help.\u00a0 He looked to be in his mid- to late twenties, although it\u2019s not always easy to tell with the mask in the way (which, along with the work gloves, safety boots, and tenugui<\/em> towel around the neck, is a common piece of volunteer accoutrement).\u00a0 I asked him where he was from.\u00a0 \u201cWe all drove up from Kobe last night,\u201d he said, with the Kansai accent to prove it.\u00a0 I asked why such a large group had come from so far away.\u00a0 \u201cWhen Kobe was destroyed, a group from Ishinomaki came to our neighborhood to help out \u2013 we\u2019re just here to return the favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

After taking care of a few logistical points concerning the upcoming funeral with the head priest, Takumi took me into the main hall to see the altar.\u00a0 Most of the floor leading up to it had been inundated, so the floorboards were now removed.\u00a0 We negotiated our way across the bare beams beneath, pushed aside a tarp hung to keep dust from the restoration work off the altar, and stepped inside.<\/p>\n

The place was full of boxes containing the bones of people whose funerals would take place in the next few days.\u00a0 Four and a half months since the tsunami, and there were still funerals to be held for the victims; there were only so many priests and funeral halls to go around, after all.\u00a0 Earlier on, cremation facilities had also been busy, and many people had to take the bodies of their loved ones to crematoriums outside of the prefecture to get things taken care of in a timely manner.\u00a0 Takumi ended up taking his loved ones to a facility in neighboring Yamagata.<\/p>\n

Their bones were here too, of course.\u00a0 Takumi pointed them out to me \u2013 three ornamental boxes lined up in the left side of the altar, each with a black-framed picture of the deceased behind it.\u00a0 He gently, lovingly, lifted the pictures one by one from behind their boxes and showed them to me.\u00a0 I had met his father twice and wife only once; his daughter\u2019s whole life had passed between our last meeting and this reunion.\u00a0 Four and a half months, and finally he had the opportunity to lay his loved ones to rest.<\/p>\n

We left Saik\u014dji and headed back toward the city center.\u00a0 On the way, Takumi recounted more of what it was like in the days immediately following the tsunami.\u00a0 He and the other people who escaped the water on the roof of Watanoha Middle School were stuck there for over a day while the waters receded.\u00a0 As they did, he saw horrible things left behind: dead bodies, some torn apart and headless, lay amidst the rubble-strewn landscape.\u00a0 It was three days before he could begin searching for his family.\u00a0 First, he found his son, who had taken refuge at his school.\u00a0 Next, they found his mother, also alive and well, at another evacuation center.\u00a0 After the quake, she went out to buy food and water, so she was not home when the tsunami struck.\u00a0 This ultimately saved her; a Self-Defense Force search-and-rescue party had already found his father\u2019s body in the ruins of their neighborhood.\u00a0 Takumi eventually got in touch with a friend living outside of the disaster zone, who put the three of them up and lent Takumi a car so he could begin the search for his wife and daughter.<\/p>\n

Our car climbed up a fairly steep road into the part of the city just south of the station and city hall, which suffered no significant damage from the tsunami.\u00a0 We pulled into the parking lot of what looked like a small community center or library.\u00a0 \u201cI think you\u2019ll find this interesting,\u201d Takumi said as we approached the entrance, \u201cthis is where all of the personal belongings that are found in the rubble are put on display, so their owners can come and claim them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the staff members handed us each a pair of white, cotton-knit work gloves, and we entered a large room filled with narrow tables arranged in long rows.\u00a0 On these tables were family portraits, photos, photo albums, yearbooks, framed awards, and diplomas, all individually wrapped in clear plastic bags.\u00a0 The rows were divided into sections, according to what part of the city the items had been found in.<\/p>\n

It was an impressive and sad sight: sad, because the thought obviously occurred that some of the people in these pictures were probably no longer alive.\u00a0 Likewise, some of the photos might well never be claimed.\u00a0 This lonely feeling was only compounded by the peculiar effect of salt water on the images, which bleached them out from the edge of the paper inward, seeming to encroach on the subject of the photo, threatening it with permanent erasure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time, though, I couldn\u2019t help but be touched by the conscientious effort to return such mementos to the people for whom they would really mean something.\u00a0 Most of these things, I would later learn, were recovered by volunteer crews in the course of shoveling out damaged homes and sludge-clogged drainage ducts.\u00a0 Anything that might have personal significance was set aside and eventually delivered here.\u00a0 In the midst of the backbreaking work of returning the city to some semblance of functionality, the emotional needs of the people who had suffered with the disaster were not overlooked.<\/p>\n

This was not Takumi\u2019s first visit to the facility.\u00a0 He had come before in search of any photos from his home that might have been discovered, but in vain the first time.\u00a0 This was a follow-up visit to see if anything had come in since.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he found nothing in the main room, but decided to check in a back room to see if anything he could recognize might be there.\u00a0 This room contained a variety of different kinds of objects: toys and games, children\u2019s school backpacks, books, ledgers, diaries, CDs, and even old LPs.\u00a0 All of these things belonged to someone.\u00a0 All of them had been carefully rescued from the rubble and rotten sludge to wind up here.\u00a0 I hoped that it would just be a matter of time before they were all claimed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Today, one of them was.\u00a0 Something on a table in a corner of the room caught Takumi\u2019s eye, and he leaned forward to get a better look.\u00a0 It was a plastic album for keeping New Year\u2019s greeting cards received in years past \u2013 so waterlogged that it was at first barely recognizable as such.\u00a0 The addressee\u2019s name on the first card in the file was legible enough, though: \u201cAbe Yoshiko\u201d \u2013 Takumi\u2019s wife.\u00a0 He picked it up with the same gentle care with which he had lifted her portrait from behind the box of her remains at the temple.\u00a0 \u201cShe used to keep years and years worth of these things,\u201d he said, more to himself than to me.<\/p>\n

We headed to the desk at the entrance, where we had received our gloves.\u00a0 There was a bit of paperwork for Takumi to fill out to claim the album.\u00a0 With that taken care of, we got back in the car and drove on.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Our final stop was a Shinto shrine that overlooks the city and the ocean beyond from a commanding height.\u00a0 I realized as we approached the torii<\/em> gate that I had been here many years before.\u00a0 Shortly after my wife and I were married in Sendai (with Takumi in attendance), we made a trip out to Ishinomaki for some purpose \u2013 I can\u2019t remember what.\u00a0 While we were in town, I contacted Takumi.\u00a0 It was during the short break in March between the end of one school year in the start of the next, so he had free time to show us around, and brought us up here.\u00a0 That was probably twenty years back; we\u2019d all aged a bit since then, but when I asked Takumi if he recalled that visit he said he was just thinking about it himself.\u00a0 I of course don\u2019t recall what might have been going through my mind back on that day, but clearly the thought that I might be here twenty years in the future with this same friend, but under very different circumstances, would not have occurred to me.<\/p>\n

Takumi pointed out various points of interest \u2013 and destruction \u2013 from our vantage point under the torii<\/em>.\u00a0 Then we walked a short distance downhill from the shrine to a small snack shop that sold kakigori<\/em> \u2013 a summertime treat of shaved ice, topped with syrups in every flavor and color imaginable.\u00a0 As we sat across a decrepit table from each other on rickety chairs, Takumi told me more about what the first days were like.\u00a0 His sense of humor (which often tended toward the scatological) was now fully evident: \u201cThe worst thing was that there was no water to drink or to flush the toilets with, so everyone became really constipated.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t take a dump for at least ten days!\u00a0 That never happens!\u00a0 I finally had to use an enema, and even that didn\u2019t work right away.\u201d\u00a0 I gave him my best \u201cI\u2019m trying to eat here\u201d look, and he let the subject drop.<\/p>\n

The next moment, he was different.\u00a0 \u201cWe used to come up here every so often,\u201d he said, looking out the window of the shop at nothing in particular, \u201cKanon and Yoshiko used to like to during the summer.\u201d\u00a0 This was the first trace of sadness I had heard in his voice, and I got the feeling that he was staring out the window so that he wouldn\u2019t have to make eye contact.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou alright?\u201d\u00a0 I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, sometimes I can\u2019t help remembering, though\u2026sometimes it\u2019s really hard\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Takumi had some business to take care of after that, so he drove me back to the station, which was very near to the office of JEN, where I would go to commence volunteer work.\u00a0 We said goodbye; I would be seeing him again in a few days at the funeral.<\/p>\n

I had a couple of hours to kill, but did not feel like walking very far, due to the humidity and the weight of my luggage.\u00a0 I went into a coffee shop near the station to begin writing about what I had just seen, but couldn\u2019t make much headway.\u00a0 The coffee shop was crowded with what seemed to be regular patrons, and I was attracting enough attention just by being an unknown foreigner there; I didn\u2019t need to attract more by struggling to choke back tears in public.\u00a0 I left in such a daze, though, that I forgot to pay for my coffee.\u00a0 As I stood outside, blinking in the afternoon sun and wondering where the hell to go next, one of the two women behind the counter came out and, in incredibly apologetic tones, informed me that I owed her 300 yen.<\/p>\n

I apologized as profusely as I could in my embarrassment, paid her, and crossed the street to city hall.\u00a0 At least there I figured I might find an air-conditioned public space, and maybe even an outlet from which I could purloin electricity to charge my laptop battery.\u00a0 I guessed right on both counts.\u00a0 As I sat there on a folding chair by a wall in the lobby, my laptop charging by my side, I happened to notice a bulletin board a short distance away.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are missing persons posters, placed here by people who are still waiting to here news \u2013 even the worst news \u2013 of loved ones, four and a half months after the tsunami.\u00a0 If there is a more painful situation than Takumi\u2019s that I could imagine at that point, it would have to be this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(It\u2019s been a week without much internet access for me, and without much time to write, for that matter.\u00a0 Now that I\u2019m back in Sendai I hope to upload a lot over the next couple of days, so check back often!) (Also, big thanks to Dave Tatem for the technical assist on the entry below […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"parent":694,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/84"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/84\/revisions\/715"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}