One year after the disaster.

It is almost one year ago that the North East of Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. This week I visited the area for the first time with a group from Hatena.

We stayed at a beautiful resort along the coast located on a high rock that was not directly hit by the disaster. The director of the hotel told us about how a large group of people from the neighboring town took refuge here together with guests that could not go home for days because of damage to the roads. We had a camp to develop new services at this hotel to have a chance to meet with local people and users of Hatena in the area. 

Enormous amounts of rubble have been cleared away, and temporary housing has been build, but a lot remains to be done. As you can see in this picture taken yesterday by id:kiyohero. 

Problems where the local people talked about are that communities have been scattered over numerous emergency housing sites; Children have to travel over great distances to get to their new schools and that some towns despite the emergence of temporary shopping centers need to do without a supermarket.