Most people in Sendai are living their lives much as though nothing happened on March 11, 2011. On the surface, anyway.
But push on north as the sun is setting over the Tohoku region, toward the town of Minamisanriku, and the blackness overtakes you.
First the mountains roll in toward the coast to swallow up the roads; then, little by little, the lights are extinguished. What's missing is all the ambient light that vital, living towns emit. I've seldom driven in such pitch darkness. That's what a ghost town after dark looks like. And Minamisanriku is very nearly a ghost town.
When I was last in Minamisanriku the roads were strewn with muck or littered with boats, the buildings were decorated with the ropes and buoys of the oyster farms that once thrived here and the tsunami, which struck shortly after the massive earthquake of March 11, toppled buildings.
All that's gone now-the streets scrubbed, most of the debris carted away and sorted into metal or wood or plastic. What's left isn't much of a town. (macleans.ca)