Update: Tsunami warnings lifted in northeast Japan - NHK television - @REUTERSFLASH
See This Earthquake Ravaged Japanese Highway Rebuilt in Three Days These two photos show the same stretch of road—the Great Kanto branch—three days apart. By March 16th, just three days after the earthquake tore it apart, the road was rebuilt to the condition seen in the photo. Here’s the press release (run through Google Translate) from Nexco East, the company that runs that stretch of regional highway.
Good News: “Survivor of Japan quake and tsunami found eight days after disaster- NHK citing military” - @REUTERSFLASH
The young man was found in Kesennuma city in Miyagi prefecture, which was one of the hardest-hit regions.
Toshihito Aisawa’s father, mother, grandmother and two cousins are all missing. For days the 9-year-old has been desperately searching for them at evacuation centers in the Japanese city of Ishinomaki, holding up hand written signs pleading for information. On one is written their names, on the other the simple message “I will come again tomorrow.” (via msnbc)
Inventing monsters to explain or come to grips with natural disasters has deep roots in Japanese culture. The “namazu,” or catfish, is a legendary figure and a popular subject of ukiyo-e woodblock prints: a giant underground catfish who swishes up his tail to cause earthquakes — often shown with a monkey or a minor deity called Kashima on his back attempting to restrain the damage. Earthquakes were also explained by an imbalance of yin forces (water) and yang forces (fire) inside the earth.
At left, an allied correspondent stands in the rubble in front of the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima, Japan, on Sept. 8, 1945, a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare, was dropped by the US on Monday, Aug. 6, 1945. At right, A man stands at a tsunami affected field in Minamisanriku, Miyagi prefecture, on March 13. (Stanley Troutman / AP, Jiji Press / AFP - Getty Images)
Evacuation Zone Around Nuclear Plant
The Japanese government told people living within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to evacuate, and people within 30 kilometers to stay indoors.
A Japanese home is seen adrift in the Pacific Ocean in this photograph taken on March 13, 2011 and released on March 14. Ships and aircrafts from the US Navy’s Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group are searching for survivors in the coastal waters near Sendai, Japan. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan McCord / US Navy via Reuters)
A “HELP” sign is written on the ground of Ohara Primary School near a sea coast covered with the rubble in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan, on Monday, March 14, three days after a massive earthquake and the ensuing tsunami hit Japan’s east coast. (Kyodo News via AP)
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An explosion Monday at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station blew the roof off the containment building of reactor No. 3, right. Reactor No. 1’s containment building, left, was damaged in an explosion on Saturday.
As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months. (Read On)
