13 years after the tsunami
This is the 22nd part of our open-ended series to document the recovery of the tsunami-hit coast of northeastern Japan, where nearly 20,000 people lost their lives and entire towns were destroyed on March 11...
Twelve years after the tsunami
On the first day of our trip, we visited the coast around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant...
Eleven years after the tsunami
Since my previous visit, the rebuilt city centers along the Sanriku Coast have further grown livelier...
Ten years after the tsunami
A decade has passed since the tsunami. Progress felt slow in the beginning when debris removal along the devastated coast alone took over a year
Nine years after the tsunami
Soon a decade will have passed since the 3.11 disaster. On our first visit in April 2011, recovery seemed unbearably distant...
Eight and a half years after the tsunami
We traveled by rental car from Miyako to Sendai. The highlights of the trip were watching a Rugby World Cup game in Kamaishi and...
Eight years after the tsunami
For the first time, we exclusively used public transportation to travel along the coast...
Seven and a half years after the tsunami
We traveled by rental car from Sendai northwards to Hachinohe, staying overnight in Miyako and covering over 400 kilometers...
Seven years after the tsunami
On our 3-day trip we witnessed much progress in the recovery efforts along the coast, as devastated town districts have been coming to life again and even the worst-hit city centers...
Six and a half years after the tsunami
In many of the destroyed town centers, the colossal work of elevating the ground by several meters and constructing massive seawalls is nearing completion...
Six years after the tsunami
The enormous task of elevating the ground of coastal districts by several meters and re-enforcing the waterfront is finally approaching completion...
Five and a half years after the tsunami
This time, we started our journey in Morioka from where we reached the coastal city of Miyako in under two hours by rental car...
Five years after the tsunami
Five years after the big disaster, increasingly many new residential districts are being completed, allowing...
Four and a half years after the tsunami
On this trip we witnessed further progress in the monumental project to raise the elevation of entire former city districts by several meters...
Four years after the tsunami
One year year after our last visit, we witnessed a lot of visible progress. Most eye-catching was the work on raising the ground of former town centers...
Three years after the tsunami
The focus of efforts along the Sanriku Coast have now definitely shifted from the clean-up to the reconstruction phase, and the recovery progress is becoming more and more obvious...
Two and a half years after the tsunami
Clean-up efforts seemed to be nearing completion, as some of the last remaining damaged structures and most mountains of debris have disappeared from the cities...
Two years after the tsunami
After seeing little dramatic progress on our previous two visits, we felt that the recovery process has finally started to shift...
One and a half years after the tsunami
On the first sight, not much drastic change was visible, but on a closer look many steps towards recovery were...
One year after the tsunami
One year after the tsunami, we revisited some of the worst hit cities along the Sanriku Coast in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures on April 16 and 17, 2012...
Half a year after the tsunami
A little bit over half a year after the tsunami, we revisited some of the worst hit cities along the Sanriku Coast. In most areas the debris has been sorted and collected into huge mountains, paving the way for reconstruction...
One month after the tsunami
One and a half months after the March 11 disaster, good progress has been made on clearing major roads, recovering victims and reinstating the food supply. The self defense force and police from all over the country were...
