After the Wave - 2 Showing Up

It turns out that Ofunato is actually quite far away from Tokyo. 330 miles (530km) north of Tokyo, it was about as close to the epicenter of the 3/11 earthquake as any land in Japan.

Simply getting there would be a bit of an adventure for me. This would be the farthest outside of Tokyo I'd been, and I would be traveling alone. The first step in my journey was a ride on the world famous Shinkansen, Japan's bullet train system.

Looks pretty cool. This was my first Shinkansen experience and I certainly came away impressed. Tickets aren't cheap but the ride is virtually silent and perfectly comfortable. Delays are virtually non-existent.

After going to work in the morning I went across town to Tokyo station. I arrived at the station at 1pm, bought a ticket for the 1:08pm train to Sendai, promptly boarded the train and took off.

Having skipped my launch I purchased a Bento boxed launch. Several options were available and since I had no idea what was in each of them I just picked one at random.

I was a little surprised when the bento saleswoman asked me if I knew how to eat this.

"Um I open the box and eat what's inside?"

At this she leaned over and found a small yellow string protruding from the box. She pulled the string out of the box, told me to wait five minutes, then left.

I was really surprised when my Bento suddenly became very hot and started steaming. Yes that's right my bento started steaming. It was literally cooking itself in front of me.

After my lunch finished cooking itself, I opened it up to find a plastic bowl of rice and beef located in another bowl which contained some sort of chemical packet.

After I finished eating I sat back to watch the scenery go by. The landscape shaped by volcanic mountains makes for some great window viewing. The mountains punctured every few minutes by some rice fields or city.

The Shinkansen took me as far north as the city Sendai. From there I would need to ride a bus four hours to Ofunato. The tsunami had damaged all of the rail lines leading into the city and they still weren't operational.

Sendai is actually a fairly significant medium sized city with a population of over 1 million. I arrived there by 3:30pm, but the next bus that went to Ofunato didn't leave until 5:40. So I had a couple hours to explore the area around the station.

Most of the foot traffic flowed into these large open air malls, with high glass arcade ceilings. Presumably these are too keep the snow out during the winter.

There seemed to be at least seven or eight city blocks worth of these types of malls.

By the time I boarded the bus at 5:40 it was already dark out. The bus was almost full, and would make about 10 stops on it's way to Ofunato which was the last stop. I got a few looks when I got on as I was the only foreigner.

After driving for about an hour and making the first couple of stops virtually all of the city lights had been left behind. The road the bus was taking was technically a highway, but it wound it's way through hills and mountains.

Slowly with each stop that went by, more and more passengers got off the bus until I was the last one left. As we neared Ofunato I was tracking my progress on my phone. Outside the bus everything was dark, but on the screen of my phone it showed we were moving through populated areas.

At around 10pm we finally reached the end of the line and I got off the now empty bus. Looking around me all the buildings were closed and the streets were deserted. I broke out the access map to the All Hands base that I had printed out. It was a about a five minute walk from where I was.

On the way there I passed the first sign of life which was a fairly lively Japanse style bar.

I managed to find the All Hands base, and met the volunteer coordinator. Who had me fill out a few forms and gave me a quick tour of the facilities. From the communal sleeping area

Bedding not included.

To the bucket showers.

Before bed I had my first chance to talk to some of the volunteers. Most were young, from say early 20s to 30 or so. With maybe a few older. The majority were foreigners from english speaking countries, mostly the US and Brittan.

About 25 or so volunteers had left that evening. Most of those that were still here were long termers. They had been here for a month or longer. Some people had been here since the beginning. I had stumbled into some wild diverse family gathering. Welcome, but an outsider.