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[ponpo]

I think there are lots of interesting articles today about this so not sure which to link, but here are some. Share any!

Two good Nikkei pages

The first is A closer look at the recovery of Japan's northeast

After the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's northeastern Tohoku region, The Nikkei began monitoring recovery efforts in specific places. Today, huge sea walls guard towns that were swallowed in the waves. Dwellings, shops and factories have been built, giving devastated communities a semblance of normal life. Yet the scars of the catastrophe are all too apparent. The cleanup process -- including the disposal of contaminated waste from the meltdown-hit Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant -- continues.

Photos and data reveal the progress that has been made over the last five years, as well as the challenges that remain.

The second is Photographs and recollections from the disaster zone

First came the violent earthquake at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011. Then, a massive tsunami engulfed entire towns. The disaster left more than 18,000 people dead or missing, and the survivors found themselves in a scene from hell. Amid the numerous aftershocks, an invisible threat also emerged -- radiation from the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. While the impact in the Tokyo area was nothing compared to the devastation in northeastern Tohoku, the capital, too, was temporarily hobbled. Public transport and other systems were interrupted; soon, staple goods were in short supply.

Five years on, the memories are fading -- not for Tohoku residents, who are still trying to piece their lives back together, but for the rest of the country and the world. In this special feature, Nikkei reporters who covered the catastrophe look back at their experiences.

CBC - The 2011 Japan tsunami: Images then and now

The 9.0-magnitude quake off the country's northeast coast triggered a tsunami that washed deep inland, putting many towns underwater and causing a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, with the subsequent release of radioactive material.
Almost 16,000 people died as a result of the quake and tsunami, with another 2,500 people still labelled as missing. More than 150,000 were displaced from their homes.
Rebuilding efforts in Japan continue to this day. Here's a comparative look at some of the northeastern towns hardest hit by the tsunami — Natori, Yamada, Kesennuma, Shinchi and Naraha — and the situation five years later.

And an article from The Guardian - After Fukushima: faces from Japan's tsunami tragedy, five years on with some personal stories.

To mark the anniversary of Japan’s worst disaster since the war, the Guardian met six people whose courage and determination has inspired other people across the disaster-hit region. From the mayor of a radiation-hit city who refused to leave, to a traumatised fisherman who now looks after his elderly neighbours – ordinary people who, in a few terrifying minutes, saw their lives transformed by catastrophe.

 

[super-famicom]

I was working in southern Ibaraki Prefecture at the time and still the quake was very strong. I'll never forget that day.

 

[Lambtron]

I was staying up late to be awake for it to officially become my birthday and ended up staying awake for hours watching coverage of this.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

I was wrapping up my last day teaching at an elementary school in Tsukishima. Trains weren't running so I kept the kids occupied until the last one got picked up by his parents around 9 PM, then slept in my office until Saturday. Couldn't get a hold of my buddy in Sendai because the cell network was overloaded. Crazy time.

 

[lupinko]

I'm on my way to head to work and it'll be a day of remembrance. I'm also going to attend a memorial event on Sunday here in Sendai. While I came here after the event a few years ago, I've learned a lot living and working with the local people of this community.

 

[A Link to the Past]

Shit, I remember this. :/ It was so bad. I legit get teary-eyed when I see this pic (spoilering because)

Spoiler

It also makes me angry because I first saw it around the same time I saw images of people calling it revenge for Pearl Harbor. What fucking monsters. :/

 

[UnluckyKate]

I died for 4 minutes 5 years ago. I remember seeing this on the news while recovering from heart failure in hospital. This and Fukushima was crazy back then. I kept me busy thinking at something else than my heart.

 

[Oriel]

The way in which Japan recovered from the Great Tohoku Earthquake was nothing short of stunning. This was an image widely circulated in the weeks after the disaster which showed that Japan's supposed decline as a major world power is still some way off:

 

[Mr Swine]

Has it really gone 5 years? Still feels so fresh in my memory :/ I really hope that there isn't a stronger earthquake that creates an even bigger tsunami. I don't know if Japan can cope that

 

[ponpo]

I was working in southern Ibaraki Prefecture at the time and still the quake was very strong. I'll never forget that day.

Dang, whereabouts? I live in tsukuba now and I don't know if there was much damage but I imagine the quake was was more violent than the weekly ones.

The way in which Japan recovered from the Great Tohoku Earthquake was nothing short of stunning. This was an image widely circulated in the weeks after the disaster which showed that Japan's supposed decline as a major world power is still some way off:

Was surprised at some of the stuff in the first link I put in the OP. I'm not sure how common it is to due after flooding or tsunamis but raising the ground level by 10 metres sounds nuts.

 

[ponpo]

Irrelevant to non-Tokyo GAF but events today if bored. Big event in Hibiya park & 3/11 film festival.

http://peaceonearth.jp/

http://www.3331.jp/schedule/en/003224.html

 

[Kenshin001]

Was in Tokyo when it happened. My day off so I was at home on the computer. My daughter and mother in law had gone for a walk so I ran outside looking for them. So relieved to see my daughter's smiling face.

I read recently there were still 2500 people missing, they'll probably never be found. The most heartbreaking story I read was the man who lost his youngest daughter and spent years combing the beaches looking for her, for just something. Just destroyed me as a dad to a 6yo daughter.

 

[minor effort]

I was living in Yamagata-shi at the time. The quake shook the hell out of us there, but the city itself was fortunately spared much damage.

I had planned on visiting Sendai that next day.

 

[RankoSD]

This is the scariest thing, listening to the countdown and awaiting for the ground to shake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-FMpNBfna8

 

[andythinkpad]

Greatest nuclear power plant catastrophe?

 

[yanipheonu]

I give a lot of credit to the people who were level headed enough to get those impressive aerial shots of the tsunami.

Those shots alone really showed people just how powerful and aweinspiring a tsunami can be.

Just endlessly encroaching water...

 

[BocoDragon]

I wasn't in Japan at the time but I was in a Japanese language class. Teacher broke down bawling the next day at school.

I'll never forget that day (night, for me). All those vehicles in the rolling waves

 

[Gentleman Jack]

The soil liquefaction captured was something to behold

 

[arumisan]

It was the first time I went to Japan when that happen. I remember it pretty clearly as I had just flown from Tokyo to Nagoya earlier for my study abroad with a couple of university friends and we had no idea that it what was going on at the time.

 

[DCharlie]

this graphic of the quakes is still amazing to me....

the explosion on the day itself :O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSBjEvPH2j4

 

[Darksol]

It's been a very sober and quiet day today in Japan. There's a vigil being held in my neighbourhood later tonight, and some charities are hanging outside of my station for 3/11 relief funds.

 

[AnathemicOne]

Can't believe it's been 5 years already, I remember the shock I had when I first heard the newa, absolutely devastated me back then considering I lived my childhood there.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

I was at undergrad and watching the live stream as I wrote papers. Truly horrifying stuff.
It was just heartbreaking.

 

[Garou]

Greatest nuclear power plant catastrophe?

Chernobyl!

 

[Jamie OD]

I was in Germany for a weekend of wrestling shows when it happened. The shows had several Japanese wrestlers involved and it was amazing how they were able to go through with it and perform while knowing what was happening back home. We found out they were staying up all night after the shows trying to contact their friends and family to make sure they were ok.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

Chernobyl!

Fuk is nothing like Chernobyl, though it's in the same disaster class as it.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

Shit, I remember this. :/ It was so bad. I legit get teary-eyed when I see this pic (spoilering because)

Spoiler

This one gets me too.

My wife and I had just moved from Japan to America about half a year prior to this. It was pretty damn hard to concentrate on anything else for weeks afterwards. My wife's family is about as far away from Tohoku as you can get in Kyushu, but I lived in northern Ibaraki right on the border with Fukushima.

 

[Anondreas]

The way in which Japan recovered from the Great Tohoku Earthquake was nothing short of stunning. This was an image widely circulated in the weeks after the disaster which showed that Japan's supposed decline as a major world power is still some way off:

I always wondered if anyone ever confirmed/authenticated that. If so, that's pretty amazing.

 

[Arex]

I was at work when it happened (in singapore), just spent the rest of the work day following the news stream. Surreal thing. It wasn't like the Indonesian tsunami where there weren't much real time coverage.. @_@

 

[UristMcDwarf]

My wife lived in Saitama at the time. I remember desperately trying to call her, it was terrifying. Props to all of the first responders that day.

 

[Zoc]

I still know a bunch of people whose lives have been fucked over by this. The temporary housing for refugees is being shut down, and one guy I know, not much older than me, is being kicked out without anywhere to go.

 

[Koppai]

I still know a bunch of people whose lives have been fucked over by this. The temporary housing for refugees is being shut down, and one guy I know, not much older than me, is being kicked out without anywhere to go.

That's pretty messed up.

 

[Shouta]

It's still hard to believe it's been 5 years. I've made yearly trips back to Fukushima and the town I lived in during the quake.

 

[sfedai0]

I remember watching stream in real time when the Tsunami arrived inland. Some horrifying yet surreal stuff.

 

[RyougaSaotome]

I'll never forget being at work and not hearing a single thing about this all day. Then as soon as I got home, I turned on the TV to see that an earthquake and subsequent tsunami had hit up north (I lived in Nagasaki at the time).

Me and my pals thought the death count wouldn't go above 100 since early footage and reports were just the same regions over and over again. And then by midnight it had already gotten significantly worse.

 

[jph139]

There was a fantastic photography exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts a year or two ago about the quake, tsunami, aftermath, and more. Tons of stunning images.

The most affecting bit was "Lost and Found" - a wall of amateur photographs salvaged from the wave. Just pictures of backyards and kids going to school and birthday parties, most of them damaged beyond recognition. I stood there forever looking at them, faces and memories washed away... seeing them in person was incredibly moving in a way it's hard to describe.

 

[Walpurgis]

Five years ago from this day, Japan was struck by its most powerful earthquake ever recorded, triggering tsunamis up to 40 m high (130 ft), which travelled up to 10 km inland. This single 9.0 earthquake lasted approximately 6 minutes and moved Japan 2.4 m eastward. More than 18,000 people were killed or remain MIA, more than 6,000 injured, and 180,000 people are still displaced. The tsunami caused meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and three nuclear reactors to explode due to built-up hydrogen gas.

This led to the largest nuclear disaster since 1986's Chernobyl in Ukraine and the biggest ever dump of radioactive waste into the ocean. If not for the efforts of strong men and women like the late Masao Yoshida, who defied orders from his inept superiors, Japan may have had to evacuate 50 million people. Today, there is a 20 km exclusion zone surrounding the plant, since it is currently uninhabitable due to radiation, and radioactive material continues to leak out of these reactors.

The Tohoku earthquake cost Japan $235 billion USD, making it the most expensive natural disaster in world history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...catastrophe-admits-former-prime-minister.html

Here is Japan immediately before and immediately after the 3.11 tsunami.

The tsunami as it occured (click image for YouTube video, everything floods by minute 6).

Here is the devastation.

What would crumble less wealthy nations, Japan has surmounted with a remarkable recovery. The top images are 2011, middle is 2012 and bottom is 2013.

In some of these images, it is as if nothing ever happened and those last ones were taken three years ago. However, the lives of millions of people will never be the same. Today, the people of Japan come together to remember.

 

[Viewt]

I remember being at PAX East in Boston, getting back to the hotel room, and watching the news with friends. The initial reports made it sound bad, but not nearly as serious as it ended up being. By the next morning, it was clear that things were really awful.

Very impressive recovery by Japan, though. I hope this was a wake-up call for their safety neglect.

 

[Walpurgis]

Wow, I thought my post was deleted.

edit:

Shit, I remember this. :/ It was so bad. I legit get teary-eyed when I see this pic (spoilering because)

Spoiler

It also makes me angry because I first saw it around the same time I saw images of people calling it revenge for Pearl Harbor. What fucking monsters. :/

This is heartbreaking.

The way in which Japan recovered from the Great Tohoku Earthquake was nothing short of stunning. This was an image widely circulated in the weeks after the disaster which showed that Japan's supposed decline as a major world power is still some way off:

wtf

I still know a bunch of people whose lives have been fucked over by this. The temporary housing for refugees is being shut down, and one guy I know, not much older than me, is being kicked out without anywhere to go.

So the government can fix their roads in a week but can't help actual human beings? Ridiculous.

 

[_woLf]

Will never forget how surreal it was watching all of it live on TV. Horrifying.

 

[Arex]

There was a thread here on GAF when it happened surely right? I feel like rereading them if there is one..

 

[Stereogatari]

Seeing this live was insane. The way the water just crept up the land.

 

[GhostWriter24]

The YouTube videos are chilling...

 

[Digital-Hero]

The YouTube videos are chilling...

Puts a lump in the throat for sure.

 

[ponpo]

It's still hard to believe it's been 5 years. I've made yearly trips back to Fukushima and the town I lived in during the quake.

Damn really? I didn't know you went that often. Any (relevant) photos?

 

[Shouta]

Damn really? I didn't know you went that often. Any (relevant) photos?

Nah, I lived in Aizu so we weren't that affected by the quake so it hasn't really changed much since then.

 

[Duracelllll]

There was a thread here on GAF when it happened surely right? I feel like rereading them if there is one..

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=424102

 

[ponpo]

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=424102

Crazy progression of photos.

 

[studyguy]

Was up watching live streams of this at the time, straight up awful.

 

[Sub_Level]