Earthquake Japan 3.11.11 Internet photos

Here are select photos that i grabbed from the Life magazine Boston Globe websites. I'm posting because this has been a significant thing for me in 2011 and after seeing these, and videos, and the news, etc... I can no longer complain about anything ever again, none of us can. Most of the super bad damage pictures are from the north around sendai and miyagi prefectures. Tokyo wasn't hit very badly by the earthquake and didn't get the tsunami at all. We had electricity, internet, food, water, phone service the whole time. In the north they had none of this, many still don't have it, and at this point 10,000 people died. At one school 70% of the children died as they were outside doing their standard earthquake procedure and stood no chance when the sudden tsunami wave hit. Maybe these photos will take you beyond the "looking at a car crash but just can't look away" thing and into evaluating your own life, luck, and thankfulness for what you have, and also the frailty of quickness, and randomness that life can be taken, or even disrupted for months, years, forever. I'll have a special connection to this event for the rest of my life because i was in Japan, in Tokyo. What happened in tokyo is only 0.1% of how bad it was in the north. So i can't even pretend, i don't even know a fraction of what it feels like. I sound like a giant baby right now, but if its like this for me, it's unimaginable for what it's like for them in the north.





Oil refinery in Chiba prefecture next to tokyo, lots of people live in Chiba and commute to tokyo everyday. close



a whole town gutted. these towns all remind me of fumika's town and that thought doesn't feel good.





vehicles on the tops of 3 story buildings.



burned cars in ibaraki, next to tokyo.



nothing left.



there are at least 9,997 more of these and growing.





next to tokyo. the no entry symbols on the gates adds to the power of this photo.







this bridge acted as a giant bath drain catcher. imagine being on it.







this is a big fear for me and most people during an earthquake, wondering if the earth really can separate and swallow you. This is a road in saitama which is not technically tokyo but basically is. i've been there a bunch of times.



i can't even imagine what this guy is thinking.



they say if you are outside you should stay away from stone and concrete walls. Here is a good example why.



People in the north still live in these. How long will it go on? there is still water and food rationing going on.



tons of people can't get their medications and other medical attention that they need to live.



this is the only nuclear reactor concerned picture. If the earthquake and tsunami weren't enough, 3 nuclear power plants might have been melting down. it seemed rediculous to me that they resorted to dumping water into the reactors with giant buckets and helicopters. they did this after i had already made it to Korea.



the nuclear fears caused this scene at narita airport in tokyo everyday for a week. i witnessed it first hand. all these people are waiting to check in. it took 2 hrs for me to check in.

its pretty heartbreaking to hear and see the stories at the people level. a firefighter losing his whole family after he went out to go save others. Doctors who can't save anyone because they have nothing to work with, people dying because their medicine is in their flattened homes, and it goes on and on. i think as americans we can't even understand fully how this feels. Japan is a homogeneous society, at least 95% Japanese, so there is a super strong bond that in America we don't feel because we're all mixed up. This has got to make it hurt ever more for them. I can't imagine one unified heart and soul in american beating as one with pain and emapathy for their fellow countrymen, and thats probably because we don't have just one group of people in america. My heart goes out to Japan. 　日本がんばって！