so behind okawa elementary school, there's a hill, quite a large hill actually, it’s deeply forested slope darkened by towering japanese cedars. There's this tall concrete barrier built at the foot of the hill, when you climb it, it gives you a full view of the school building

in the shadow of the cedars, just above the concrete structure, there was this little bamboo grove

In between you could hear the bamboo stems creaking and scraping against each other, the rustling of the leaves in the windy spring mist

and the voices of the museum guides echoing from the ruined school below,

trying to explain the unexplainable

I sat shivering trying to keep my fingers warm while i set up the recorder

⁄journal entry

isn't it strange to imagine this vast, open space as a dense pine tree-covered forest?

anyway, expecting a peaceful place, i found the park bustling with laborers building make-shift tents in anticipation of some grand event

life just carries on

/journal entry

This project is made possible with funding from The Scholarship Foundation for Studies of Japanese Society.

The earthquake that struck Japan on Friday 11 March 2011 was the fourth most powerful in the history of seismology. It knocked the Earth six and a half inches off its axis; it moved Japan four metres closer to America. In the tsunami that followed, more than 18,000 people were killed. At its peak, the water was 40 metres high. Half a million people were driven out of their homes. Three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi power station melted down, spilling their radioactivity across the countryside, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The earthquake and tsunami caused more than $210bn of damage, making it the most costly natural disaster ever.²

² —Richard Lloyd Parry, The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/24/the-school-beneath-the-wave-the-unimaginable-tragedy-of-japans-tsunami)

beyond the fifth floor, they actually hadn’t renovated the hotel;

in the stained mahogny details beside the bed, there was this built-in radio — i turned it on, imagining it surviving the waves, unscathed

/journal entry

so behind okawa elementary school, there's a hill, quite a large hill actually, it’s deeply forested slope darkened by towering japanese cedars. There's this tall concrete barrier built at the foot of the hill, when you climb it, it gives you a full view of the school building

in the shadow of the cedars, just above the concrete structure, there was this little bamboo grove

In between you could hear the bamboo stems creaking and scraping against each other, the rustling of the leaves in the windy spring mist

and the voices of the museum guides echoing from the ruined school below,

trying to explain the unexplainable

I sat shivering trying to keep my fingers warm while i set up the recorder

⁄journal entry

i read it was called samejima, shark island.

i guess it was because the island was shaped like a shark — local legend has it that a great white shark once lived there.

/journal entry

i met a dockworker, he asked if i was allright taking a selfie with him.

oh, i always try to talk to foreigners,
he said

/journal entry

isn't it strange to imagine this vast, open space as a dense pine tree-covered forest?

anyway, expecting a peaceful place, i found the park bustling with laborers building make-shift tents in anticipation of some grand event

life just carries on

/journal entry

the tranquility of the austere architecture,
the boundless serenity of the expanse—
soundtracked by the restless clatter of human labor,

behind a creek, water, source of all life

/journal entry

This project is made possible with funding from The Scholarship Foundation for Studies of Japanese Society.