Otsuchi

A strange, if memorable day. Kazuko, a colleague at one of my schools, phoned me up a couple of days ago asking for a lift. She has a mother and brother in Otsuchi, one of the towns down the coast that was very badly hit by the tsunami. She doesn't drive, there's no public transport there and I have a car, so was able to be of assistance.

We knew via Google Person Finder and a phone call that her relatives were ok. The town, however, looks as if it had been bombed. The scenes of devastation there are greater than anything I'd seen before: two- and three-storey buildings ripped apart, what used to be the town centre steamrollered. From your car, you can see from one side of town all the way to the other: there's nothing in the way now. The monumental power of the tsunami is frightening even 5 weeks on.

We met Kazuko's mother at what used to be their family home: Kazuko pointed out her childhood doll and her brother's comics in a pile of rubble. Her mother is staying in a very well-run shelter near their house and clearing the house as she can - we took a carful of stuff back to Kazuko's apartment in Kuji. Her brother is unharmed. What the future holds for them both is uncertain, to say the least, but as Kazuko said, 'The most important thing is life'. Quite so.