18 Days to go and an amazing day

Time´s a relative matter. When I arrived in Sendai i thought to have two long month ahead, but no, it´s just 18 days left and still so much to do!

But now about the things that happened this week. Not much, until yesterday. My Professor told me we will have an Interview with some volunteers at Yuriage Junior High school and it turned out to be a long day, full of interviews and impressions.

But let me give you some impressions:
1. BBC Documentation on Yuriage, early after the Tsunami
2. BBC Documentation on Yuriage, one year later (very much like I found it now).

Take a look at it, you might have seen many of the images before, but still it shows what was and is going on here.

We had the interview with volunteers running an information center just aside the Yuriage Junior High school in a room build by three containers. One person was a owner of a company with more than 100 employees at two sites that are very close to Sendai Airport. He was at work when the earthquake happened and ordered all workers to stay at work until 16.00 (the earthquake happened at 14:46), before they could go home (just to keep them safe), but at around 15.15 the Tsunami hit the coast and he saw how it hit the area. He said all his workers survived, but most probably he lost friends and maybe family members. You could see how much he tried to keep control of his emotions.
When hearing this kind of story's it´s actually very hard to stay focused on my studies here that have a different topic. How can I ask people with this kind of stories about ecosystems? Did the coastal protection forest help to mitigate the tsunami?  What am I expecting? My colleagues here are a great help and we still get many results. Still, I often feel very stupid.
But beside the tragedies, people live on and can laugh. It´s impressive.
After that we also had a short talk with a man clearing his land of plants (where is house once was).

We went on to Iwanuma (just south of the airport) and had lunch at a very nice Japanese noodle restaurant and a former colleague of my Professor joint us. She was a kind of guide for the rest of the day.
So we went to someones house (2.4 km from the coast, still flooded well over 1m), did our interview, looked at the destroyed part of the city and finally went to one of the temporary housings of people who lost their houses.
When we arrived there i was very astonished. Children running around, people in good mood, just as we would visit a camping site! But if that is your daily life, hm, just think of it.

But you know what? As we were just sitting at some benches and asked people passing by if we could have talk others broad us some soybeans, coffee, watermelons and cookies.
The guy on the picture is a kind of "mayor for the people there" and involved in the resettlement process. He told us stories, you would not belief it.
I have to thank these people and my team for having such an interesting experience!