Back to...New Normal

 I'm glad to say progress is being made in recovery efforts, especially at Tagajo, just outside of Sendai. The muck has been swept up, the trashed cars are being removed, and the spoiled and soiled furnishings are piled at the curb for disposal.

Trucks with cranes are hauling away the trashed cars that the tsunami deposited here and there.
Stores were emptied out and washed and disinfected, awaiting new shelving and furnishings. The first to open will do a booming trade! Nothing else in the area is open yet.

 Note the waterline on the window, and the debris washed into the fence. Cars are stacked up in the background. Tagajo did not get a direct hit by the tsunami. The water came in, but not with maximum velocity. Things were completely different in Shichigahama.

 

In Shichigahama, we came over a hill and before us was a debris field as far as the eye could see. This picture doesn't do it justice. The store was gone, but the sign stayed. We saw the store, foundation and all, in the middle of a rice field.  The debris field covered the road, and we had to detour.

This was a clam farm at the beach near our cabin. The building housing the clam farm is gone, and the foundation is undermined as sand was blasted away by the wave.

Inland from the beach the tsunami completely removed the house on the lower level, as well as numerous houses at ground level, but it did not reach the higher level houses. Location, location, location.

 

Don Love walks back from the edge of the beach. The curve of the cliffs at this point lessened the tsunami's force, sparing this house from complete destruction. Houses further from the beach had their first floors reduced to splinters, while the second floor structures would remain intact and float into nearby fields. Many of those fields are still underwater, and the salt in the seawater ruins them for growing crops. It'll be a long way back for Shichigahama.