Hachinohe Port Tsunami Clean Up

Well... I know now that a housewife is something I can never be... maybe a mom/housewife... but I am still not sold (not dogging the people that are housewifes... just not for me). The Youth Center has been closed all week and I have been sitting at home... cleaning and lame things like that... so when I heard about this opportunity to go to Hachinohe to help clean up the port I was TOTALLY STOKED! First some some pictures of the devastation on the way into the port then pictures of us helping clean up after the tsunami.

Here is the first view of the port we had... two giant boats on docks... not where they should be... 

This was on the main road... just hanging out... 

Here is our group getting our instructions of what to help with... we basically picked up and sorted all the trash, metal & wooden pallets 

After we were done with this area... and yes it was snowing...  

Here we are digging sand out of gutters so that if another tsunami comes through or it rains the water has somewhere to go... 

I was so happy to be apart of something to help the country and people that I love so much... I am sure we will be helping until there is nothing left to do... I love you Japan!

Misawa Port -Post Tsunami

These are images from the Misawa Port just days after the Tsunami struck... I don't have much to say... they are too sad... some clean up had already started (like plowing the foot of sand that covered all the roads) but when I got there, no one was around... it was really creepy and really really tragic... this place was utterly destroyed. 

I thought this was powerful... coca-cola... something we all can relate to

Some how a light bulb managed to survive... 

This slab of concrete was massive... just thrown around like nothing

a buoy... maybe from out in the ocean, maybe from in the port

A road used to go across here connecting the swimming beach to the port

This huge boat is hundreds of feet from the water

Miss Veedol Beach Post Tsunami

We have a beach about 10 minutes up the road called Miss Veedol Beach; there is a replica of a plane and a huge tower at this beach. One of the pilots who flew in after the tsunami said he didn’t see the tower anymore so I wanted to go check it out. I parked the car clear of the tsunami debris and walked down to the beach. There were signs wrapped around trees… all this area used to be grass, now it is buried under a fairly deep layer of sand…

This used to be where the road went to the parking lot…

The tower was still there but not the plane. This is where the replica of the plane sat… just the support pillars are left… below is what this spot looked like before the tsunami

After Tsunami

Before Tsunami

This is all that was left of the plane… a chunk of the side… and you can see one wheel off on the fence in the distance…

This is a big concrete area where people would come and fly model planes… these cracks might be from the earthquake but my guess is they are from the tsunami… you can also tell that big crane in the background is all falling forward…

I wonder if the claw from the crane crashed into the concrete there and then got pushed sideways from the tsunami or if the tsunami put that hole there?!?

First Trip to the Beach after the Tsunami

 This is the beach I often go to surfing, walking with Kona, and for bonfires… it is 5 minutes from base… the closest one to base. It was the first place we went to see what kind of destruction was left in the wake of the tsunami. From what I know of this stretch of beach there were no people living here but there were a lot of fishing boats and shacks with supplies up behind the sea wall…  This tangle of rubble is maybe 300 feet from the ocean… finding a glass float just wasn’t the same with all this behind it…

Here is where the water rushed over the sea wall taking out part of the wall as it went… just ripping through steel and concrete!

A little further down the sea wall this is where the biggest shack on the beach stood. You can’t even tell anything used to be there except for the lack of trees… there is a before picture below this one…

After

Before

This is where we would drive our cars out onto the beach to surf or have bonfires… now it is a 6-foot drop off in some places

Back up in the trees… here is a boat that was left up in a tree, 15 feet off the ground…

And that shack I showed you that just disappeared… well I found it… 100 feet away…

If this is what it is like here… where these were no people and only small fishing shacks it hurts me to think about super populated areas and villages right on the sea that were just demolished… 

Life Post Quake

I wasn’t able to get home until a couple hours after the big earthquake… so I was kind of nervous to see my house not only post big earthquake but we already had quite a few sizeable aftershocks… AND my poor puppy Kona, AND we were dog sitting our friends two dogs...

Driving home… for the first time the gravity of the situation sunk in, and I freaked out a little bit… we had ceiling tiles crashing down on kids… would our kitchen still be together or would everything be broken on the floor, would our tv still be standing, would our bookshelves be toppled over, would the TONS of picture frames I have on the walls still me hanging?!? Worrying and freaking is no good… ever… especially not in a natural disaster situation... SO… to stop thinking about what could have happened I started making a list in my mind off all the stuff to do before it got dark, since we had no power… Still when I pulled up in front of my house I had to take a few breaths to calm my heart before walking through the door…

And then much to my surprise and gratitude my friend Sara was standing in my doorway when I opened the door!!! Things never seem quite so bad when you have a friend… apparently… after the quake Derick suggested to go check on the wives at home and make sure everyone was okay, he got the north area and I am sure other people got main base and off base… when Derick got to Sara’s house (on the 6^th floor of a tower) Derick asked if she was okay… she said yes… Derick said really cause you don’t look okay” and then she broke down and said she didn’t want to stay up there alone… Which I don’t blame her… the towers are crazy during earthquakes because they sway SO MUCH! So Derick sent her and the two dogs to our house. Our house was relatively untouched by the quake… 5 picture frames fell and a huge log I found at the beach that I haven’t done anything with yet fell over and that was it… some stuff was close to the edges of table… but not quite off… Sara’s house however was much worse off… her bookshelves fell over; glassware cabinets opened and glasses fell and broke.

So when I got home there was a pack of 5 dogs roaming my house! It was awesome! Sara and I hurried to prepare for a night without power… keeping the fridge and freezer closed as much as possible to conserve their chilling ability… digging out my grill and charcoal… gathering as many candles as possible… finding board games. And building snow lanterns to light my house!

That first night we ended up having 10 people, 5 dogs, and a crazy game of catch phrase… we grilled steak over charcoal… until it died out (there wasn’t very much) then I used old pizza boxed, and had steak & cheese sandwiches on bagels with grilled veggies… for desert we had berries with homemade whipped cream (thanks to Sara’s extreme whipping skills!).

It was the next day I went into little house on the prairie survival mode… I didn’t know how long we would be without power, how long our running water would last… and didn’t want to wait to find out. Better safe then sorry… I took our clothes that had just been washed but not dried and made a cloths line and hung them out to dry…

Since we didn’t have a big cooler I took Rubbermaid containers from a storage thing and filled them with snow from the back yard and packed everything from our fridge and freezer into the snow. I filled our big 5-gallon camping water container with water. As long as we would be getting rations of food and water I could have lasted weeks… or longer… 

The base had hot meals provided 4 times a day at the dining hall, and hot showers at the gym for anyone that needed them. I of course felt like that was cheating… and didn’t want the food we had to go bad so I made all our meals for us. We stopped by the lumber yard off base that first day after the quake and bought a couple bundles of fire wood so after that I just built fires in my grill to cook, and now I really love my cast iron skillet!

We were only without power for 3 days, two nights… and had running water the whole time so it wasn’t bad… but it was fun… I was kind of disappointed when the power came back on… Derick wasn’t… first thing he did was vacuum… not even kidding… But  I guess it is always better to be safe then sorry… a long time ago (rumor has it… and a I cant look it up cause I don’t have internet right now) that there was quake that was bigger up here in Misawa and the base lost power for 2 months with no running water for 1 month. I have learned lessons from this experience… no longer will I scoff at emergency preparedness… we need to be ready at all times for anything. 

During the Earthquake

When the big earthquake hit I was at work… we only had about 15 kids because school had just gotten out and most were still walking to the youth center. At first the earthquake was just a gentle rolling and had everybody just stay still and calm, then after about 15 seconds it got rough, I told the kids to calmly get underneath a table or in a doorway… kids were diving under the pool table, I had about 5 in the doorway with me… Doors started slamming, I had a hard time standing up because the pitching of the earth was so violent. Ceiling tiles started falling all over the building and parts of the ventilation system came crashing out of the ceiling…

I was talking to the kids the whole time… “Everybody stay calm… its almost over… you guys are doing so good… we are perfectly safe” and inside I am freaking out because this is one of the coolest things I have ever felt. About halfway through the quake we lost power… and then about a minute and half after it started it was over… kind of… over enough to walk and not fall over… we had all the kids grab their coats and go outside… since our ceiling was falling in. Outside a new group of kids had gathered… many had banged up knees from falling while walking because the quake threw them to the ground. Outside it was cold and the ground was wet from melting snow, I had my yoga mat with me and brought that outside. The kids that were freaking out the worst were sitting with me on my mat… mostly with their heads buried in whatever portion of my torso they could find and crying. The rest of the staff was walking around taking roll and comforting the kids as best they could. A lot of the kids were fine however and running around and playing, making silly dances to try to help the scared kids forget. It was so cold outside… and within 20 minutes the first big aftershock came, and during that aftershock we heard crashing like a building collapse… all the kids stopped moving, got really quiet and looked at the staff with pure panic on their faces… I knew I had to keep them calm so I just said it was probably part of the exercise that was going on base (during which explosions are not uncommon) and that seemed to calm them… while I however started to freak out just a little because that was definitely not a good sound. Sitting outside over the next hour we probably had 5 big aftershocks and countless little ones. We of course had to keep the kids out of the building, since we were not sure if the ceiling tiles would hold, and we got a buckle in our floor…

Staying in the building was not something worth risking, so we called all the parents to come get their kids, many were already on the way… some just couldn’t understand why their kid couldn’t stay… umm… our roof is falling in… about an hour and a half after we evacuated the building we got a heated bus to park in our parking lot that we could stick the kids that were left on so we didn’t all freeze to death. About 5:30 or two and half hours after the quake all the kids were with parents or emergency caretakers and we locked down our building and went home to see what was left at our houses … 

Otaru Lantern Festival

Otaru "is a city and port in Shiribeshi, Hokkaidō, Japan, northwest of Sapporo. The city faces the Ishikari Bay, and has long served as the main port of the bay. With its many historical buildings, Otaru is a popular tourist destination." ~ Wikipedia

This is the Otaru Canal. "Otaru Canal (Otaru Unga) used to be a central part of the city's busy harbor in the first half of the 20th century, when large vessels had to be unloaded by smaller ships, which then transported the goods to warehouses along the canal. The canal became obsolete, when modern dock facilities allowed for direct unloading of larger vessels. Thanks to a citizens' movement, however, a part of the canal was beautifully restored in the 1980s instead of being landfilled, while the warehouses were transformed into shops, cafes, museums and restaurants." ~Japan-guide

And now you are about to find out why this is my new favorite city on Hokkaido... maybe in all of Northern Japan... maybe in all of Japan...

Otaru Canal  

Otaru is famous for its glass works. There were a handful of shops where people were actaully blowing glass and you could make your own beads. This was one of those shops, they have the rods of colored glass to pick from then then you sit at these tables and they help you make your own beads.. this kid looks like he is making one for his girlfriend... he looked pretty stressed out! 

There were also dozens of shops that sold the glassworks. Shelves and shelves and more shelves of super delicate tiny glass things... they made me nervous... plus I had a camera bag and a tripod strapped to my back so I was sure I would crash into something... luckily I did not. 

This was on the main strip of shops, art galleries and restaurants right next to the canal... they called it snowman street because every shop had a snowman or two or three built outside... It was the cutest thing. Just imagine you are walking downtown or in your neighborhood and in front of every building there was a little wonky snowman... all lit with candles. It was so cute and intimate and I felt  like I belonged. 

This was in front of another building... snow shelves with mini snowmen and ice lanterns. This is why the festival is called the lantern festival... Because everything is aglow in soft candle light. It was so amazing. 

More ice and snow lanterns but these were located right on the main canal.

Nighttime Otaru Canal... it was so romantic

This is all on a third street in Otaru with glass floats ablaze and snow sculptures everywhere... they however weren't big like the Sapporo ones, they were small and intimate and really cool, the kind of cool that makes you think... "hmm next time is snows I am building this on my porch"

This is why this is my new favorite city!

Reasons Why I Loved the Otaru Lantern Festival:

Romantic Intimate and charming city

Really Delicious Food!!! 

Felt a personal connection like I was a part of the festival not just observing

Super easy to get to from Sapporo via Train

Reasons Why I Didn't Love the Festival:

None