Sunday evening we took the train to Ishinomaki, Lisa's first area. It's about an hour ride. The train ride was beautiful, going through forests, farms, and along the ocean. (This train line was wiped out in the tsunami in 2011, and just re-opened last year.) Anyway, very pretty.
We found our hotel, got some snacks for dinner from a nearby convenience store, and got some sleep.
The next day, Monday, August 8, we walked from the hotel to the church.
On the way we passed a restaurant named after Daniel.
I thought this was kind of cool -- they routed the gutters around power poles. I don't think I've seen construction quite like this before.
When we got to the church several of the local members were waiting to meet Lisa.
The church occupies the first floor of this two-story building.
Lisa enjoyed visiting with her friend.
We spent the morning talking, eating some snacks, and playing ping-pong.
Lisa taught one of the missionaries a bit about playing the violin...
... and gave a little concert.
About noon Sis. Kikuchi, another of Lisa's member friends, came.
She took us with her, her husband, sister, and another friend, and we went out to lunch together (tonkatsu).
Afterward we stopped in at a cake store and got some delicious Japanese cakes.
We stopped at another store to get some かまぼこ (kamaboko), a local delicacy, for Yumiko's mother. Across the street there was some construction going on, using the cutest little backhoe I've ever seen.
One of Ishinomaki's claims to fame is that a famous manga, anime, and TV artist lived here -- Shotaro Ishinomori, who is credited with creating (among other things) the "super sentai" concept (which still continues in Japan, and has been imported to the U.S. as Power Rangers). There are homages to him all over town -- decorations on the street, statues, trains painted with his characters, and a museum.
After that Lisa went to visit a bedridden Church member. While they were talking Daniel and I went for a walk along the river.
We passed this place, and couldn't figure out what it was. It has a net around it, like a sports field, and what looks like a scoreboard on the other side, but buildings in the middle. Finally we realized it's temporary housing built on a baseball field after the tsunami five years ago. Apparently it's still needed, as they continue to rebuild. (There was construction going on everywhere -- still a major project.)
In the afternoon Mr. Kikuchi took us up to Hiyoriyama Park, a park located on a steep mountain right in the middle of town. There was a shrine on top.
But mostly views of the town.
It was a weird sense of deja vu being there. I realized that it's because I'd seen a video or two of the tsunami that were taken from the park. Being high ground, and in the middle of the city, many people took refuge here. It was really strange to see a place I'd seen before in video, in such extreme circumstances.
The vantage point gave us a good view of the aftermath of the tsunami. In the two photos above, looking east toward the ocean, all those areas of green grass used to be city, and were wiped out in the disaster. They decided not to rebuild those areas -- I guess they think it's too dangerous being that close to the ocean, in case something like that ever happens again.
The bridge over the river gives an idea of how deep the water got -- we were told that there was a traffic jam of cars on the bridge. Those in the very center were high enough to survive; the rest were washed away.
All around the park, in places where you can look out over the city, there were poster-sized "before" photos that you can compare to what it looks like now.
Here's a photo looking north from the park:
And here's what it looks like now:
You can see there aren't too many buildings remaining of those that were there five years ago.
With nearly everyone we talked to in Sendai, the conversation wouldn't last more than a few minutes before a mention of the disaster. It's such a huge part of everyone's life and their recent history. It was even more that way in Ishinomaki, where nearly everyone experience the disaster up close. We heard stories from people who ran up this very hill to escape the water, those who survived by crawling up onto their roof, those who were in cars that were washed away by the water but managed to survive. Even those who got away told stories of wading through hip-deep water to get back to their house afterwards, or showed us the only three photos they have of their son as a young boy, because that's all that was on a shelf high enough on the second floor make it through.
On the one hand, Ishinomaki is a pretty place, with lots of new houses and new cars. But behind that is a realization of why so much is new, and why there is so much construction still going on.
Anyway.
Daniel got in a bit of training running down and back up the stairs.
Looking east from the park. The round building is the manga museum. It was tall enough and sturdy enough to survive the flooding.
In the evening we went to dinner with more of Lisa's friends, the Nishimura family. They were really nice.
