Tsunami

I arrived in Japan a week and a half ago to spend time with my family. It's been a strange and stressful experience being at home in Ibaraki prefecture, just south of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where high levels of radiation has put people on edge. The fact that the radiation is invisible makes it both easy to disregard but also creates a feeling of helplessness - that's everywhere all the time. Due to the radiation, much of the produce from Ibaraki was banned, until the government raised the acceptable radiation exposure limit by 20-fold. This has taken the edge off of impending economic collapse but has angered many people, especially parents with small children.

With the country's future uncertain, many people have moved or are planning to move abroad. I met one such couple, who live in the same artist community as my parents. Maho and Masa have two children: Sara, a twelve year old girl and her little brother Kai, four years old. At first, they were contemplating moving in with Maho's parents in Tokyo, where they took refuge immediately after the tsunami. While in Tokyo, Kai had nosebleeds daily, which they discovered later was a symptom of low level radiation exposure. As it turns out, winds from the north carried radiation to Tokyo immediately following the explosion. I feel saddened by Maho and Masa's experience, and the implications for Japan's future.

Earlier this week, my father and I traveled to Sendai to see the aftermath of the tsunami. It was unbelievable. The scale of destruction is impossible to describe in a single photograph, or even a film clip. It's only when you drive for hours along the coast and see all of the flattened towns that you get a real sense of how big this disaster is. We saw entire towns completely washed away, tall buildings uprooted and lying on their sides, and mass graves full of bodies that could not be cremated as is usually done in Japan. After one day of driving from one town to the next, we decided to head home the next morning. The entire coast looked like a war zone and it was too much for us to take.