The day before yesterday I drove a car to Rikuzentakata to visit the evacuation center in Takata No.1 Junior High School. On the way back home I visited the museum and went up to the second floor and took a picture of the beach and the pacific ocean.
It's a grave of cars destroyed by the tsunami.
I found a chair on the first floor.
It was on the second floor, I am sure.
Visitors sat on the chair when they made shell accessories.
The tsunami took almost all the fishes and shells from the museum to their home, the sea, but left the green turtle and the dolphin.
Thank you, OpenOffice.org community, my friends in Tokyo and people in the world for helping victims of the quake and tsunami, and supporting my project, "Magokoro" project.
My uncles donated a car to my project, "Magokoro" project, to help victims of the quake and tsunami. They are the head and the manager of a local garage and car dealer company in Sanuki, Futtsu, Chiba, near "Tokyo-wan Kannon."
Over the last weekend I and my partner and my daughter took a Tohoku Shinkansen train from Ichinoseki to Tokyo, and a rapid train from Tokyo to Chiba, then a local train from Chiba to Kisarazu, and visited my mother and my brother's family. It was our first meeting after the quake. They saw our healthy-looking faces, we saw their healthy-looking faces, we saw our faces each other, then we were happy.
We went to our uncles and picked up the car.
On the way back to Ichinoseki we drove the car and visited "Umihotaru."
If you visit Umihotaru, you can see this huge monument.
It is a cutter face for one of the world biggest shield machines, excavators which holed a tunnel under Tokyo Bay. The tunnel is a part of Tokyo Bay Aqua Line.
Thanks to a GPS navigation system which my brother gave me for the car, we made about 500km drive back to Ichinoseki safe and swift.
Two months pass by like a flash but it's been a long time.
24,829 people died or are missing. People missing and feared dead are nearly 10,000. Evacuees are about 117,000.
The police says, 14,949 died; 8,941 in Miyagi, 4,400 in Iwate, 1,544 in Fukushima, and 9,880 are missing and feared dead; 5,969 in Miyagi, 3,275 in Iwate, 632 in Fukushima.
People evacuated from the areas devastated by the quake, the tsunami and the nuclear power accident, are 117,085 in 2,412 small and large evacuation centers.
"Magokoro project," my project supported by OpenOffice.org community to help victims, will get a car which can be used to transport support goods, to take people from a evacuation center to my school, to visit evacuation centers and offer English lessons for children.
The car will be donated by my uncle living in Futtsu, Chiba, my mother's home town. I am planning to go there with my partner and daughter and pick it up. It will be a good chance to meet my friends in Chiba and Tokyo and directly tell them about my project and ask for help.
Please join us and observe a moment of silence for victims of the quake and tsunami today at 14:46 JST, 07:46 CEST, 05:46 UTC. Thank you.
You may know "Daruma doll". It's a symbol of perseverance and good luck. The picture looks like it.
The name of my prefecture, "Iwate," is written "岩手" in Japanese Kanji. "岩(Iwa)" means "rock" and "手(te)" means "hand." "岩" can be also read "Gan." This is why the picture was named "Gandaruma."
Japanese version which says "Japan" instead of "Iwate."
Arabic version.
Chinese version.
English version.
French version.
German version.
Spanish version.
Vietnamese version.
I asked my friends of OpenOffice.org community to help making their language versions. Mr. Nguyen Vu Hung helped make the Vietnamese version. Mr. Cheng Lin and Mrs. Shuwang Han helped make the Chinese version. Thanks!!
You can use "Gandaruma" free.
You can make T-shirts, stickers and so on with "Gamdaruma."
In Los Angeles, California, USA, there is a group of Japanese people from Iwate-ken.
Golden Week is consecutive holidays in Japan including sundays, saturdays and national holidays such as April 29 Showa Day, May 3 Constitution Memorial Day, May 4 Greenery Day and May 5 Children Day.
More than 70,000 people from many parts of Japan came to Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima and helped clean up houses and floors damaged from penetration of salty water, sludge and rubble.
I visited shops in Maesawa area of Oshu city, an inland city in Iwate, which were damaged a lot by the April 7 aftershock, the greatest one after the March 11 earthquake.
I saw many "INSPECTED" and "LIMITED ENTRY" signs on houses and shops there.
I didn't take a picture but there were several "NO ENTRY" signs which were red.
