I had another post all prepared but when I saw the date it would have I thought better of it. Instead I'll tell you some interesting tidbits I learned recently about what it was like here in Ota one year ago today. (I had a somewhat in-depth conversation about it with a Japanese friend for the first time.)
1. Japanese TV wasn't offering much coverage of what was going on, so other countries (i.e. the US) actually knew more about what was happening than the Japanese public.
2. However, NHK (the public/government TV station) did have helicopters with video cameras posted along the coast for just such an emergency. They were able to video the tsunami as it happened. Apparently, before the earthquake there were a lot of complaints from the public about how much money it cost the government to keep these choppers at the ready.
3. Here in Ota, the Aeon supermarket store shelves were bare for 2-3 weeks. Everyone wanted bread and Cup O' Noodles.
4. Most foreigners around here dropped everything and ran to the airports. Mainly out of the country, but some to Osaka in the far south.
I also learned that I could go over to city hall and borrow a radiation detector to run over my food any time I want. And I learned that the maps that sometimes appear on food packages to indicate where the food is from (mainly dairy--butter, milk etc.) have always been there, not just since the earthquake as I had theorized.
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