TAKUYA’S STORY

‘As usual. I left for work in a rush without saying a word to my parents. On that day, I was working in Miyako-city, about 6Okm north of my hometown, Otsuchi. It began like every other boring work day. And then it happened. The ground started shaking. It shook so hard that you couldn't stand and kept on shaking. When it finally stopped, I feared a tsunami and drove up the hill, even before I heard the warnings. I phoned my parents but there was no signal. After many hours, I reached my uncle’s house. Listening to the radio, I realised returning to Otsuchi was impossible, so I spent the long night awake there, my mind racing, unable to focus on any one thought: fear of losing my family, denial and hope for my family’s survival.

The road to Otsuchi remained impassable. Four days later, I heard rumours that people were fleeing Otsuchi using an old mountain path. I left in search of my Father. After hours of walking through the forest, imagining that somehow Otsuchi had been spared, I arrived in the town.

In an instant, my hope was shattered and the worst was before my eyes. There was nothing… absolutely nothing left, but endless piles of debris and destruction.

The rest is a blur. I remember passing where my house used to be but wasn’t anymore. I made it to an elementary school nearby. I found my mother. Alive. She screamed when she saw me. | felt my knees weaken with relief and then her words stiffened my body: “I can’t find your father”.

Exactly one month later, I found my father, finally… after I'd opened hundreds of body bags searching for him.

A part of me said, “Finally”. Then my heart went numb. Frozen, after holding on to that hope that he might be alive, for so long.

That was three years ago now.

I lost hope, but now I live with hope in the same town that stole my hope. In these three years, I met my partner, Mio, who came to Otsuchi on a rescue team, and married her. Life plays a game on you like that. If there was no tsunami i wouldn’t have gone through that devastation, but | would never have met my wife.

Otsuchi lost 10% of its population. Everyone here lost someone they love. Some people lost everyone. If | could give you one gift from this disaster, it would be to make each day count. Love the ones you love. We’re sad because the ones we love are gone. We’re sad because we can’t talk to them anymore. We'll never be sure if they knew how much we loved them.

So if you read our story, and it inspires you to tell your loved ones how much you love them, everyday — to say “Good morning” and “Goodnight”, it will be a requiem for the ones we have lost, so our journeys will not have been in vain.’

Takuya UENO

English version by Mio KAMITANI and Benedict WALKER

Published in Lonely Planet Japan, 14th Ed. Sep, 2015.

明るい将来へ (TO A BRIGHTER FUTURE)

When the first wave of the tsunami reached Otsuchi, it was 12m high, travelling at 100km/h and spanning a front almost 2km long; a dark giant, for some, visible from afar, rushing towards the town and its frightened, helpless people, but for others, obscured from sight by the town itself, where many remained oblivious to the ferocity of the destruction about to overcome them.

Can you even imagine it?

Visiting the Sanriku Coast, I felt so many emotions… was overwhelmingly heavy with sadness, frequently sparked into anger at the “unfairness” of it all and ultimately filled with compassion for those who endured such terror and tragedy.

We can’t change the past, tame the environment or bring back the dead… but we can shape the future.

The people of Otsuchi chose to rebuild their city to honour the memories of those who were taken from them and to build a better, brighter future for their children. Their strength and the quiet determination with which the survivors go about their lives after such unimaginable hardships, remains an inspiration for me when I’m sweating the small stuff or even really struggling with life.

On the Sanriku Coast, I learned that what we focus on, often becomes that which we create and all we ever see, despite there always being so much more available to us.

When we dwell on the pain of loss and regret, we can become suffocated by it, and our lives begin to contract into a downward spiral; our hearts broken by grief, fear takes hold. Unless we refuse it, at every turn.

So many people here lost everything, and sometimes, not just someone they loved, but many — friends and family members. Some lost their entire family; and many were injured. Fear took root in the hearts of many, back on that March day in 2011. But today, there’s definitely a sense that love is in the air. Despite all odds, the communities of the Sanriku coast have defied devastation and
found within themselves and by supporting each other, a resolve to rebuild, and to place their focus not on such overwhelming and incomprehensible grief; but on what lies ahead… and how to make that, the best possible future for the generations to come.

By doing that, by fighting the fear of life ‘without’ and by following the teachings of the two main belief systems enshrined in Japanese culture, Buddhism and Shintoism, the survivors of the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, in the numerous other towns devastated, like Otsuchi, have found their way forward. A decade on, the resilient, family and future focused people of the cities of the Sanriku Coast, have risen up and rebuilt new communities, as if to teach the world that ‘death is not the end’ and that together, ‘we can do anything’.

Takuya and Mio and the people of Otsuchi helped me to see why it’s so important to look ahead, not only in times of grief, loss and crisis, but every, single day.

So when, in the present moment, I find myself longing for something or someone I’ve lost or lamenting things that didn’t go how I’d hoped, or regretting decisions I’ve made or things I may have said or done; I try to flip those thoughts and feelings around. It’s not always easy, but with practice, it can become that way. It’s all about what we focus on. Denise used to say “what we think about, we bring about” and “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

What would the world look like, if, like the people of the Sanriku Coast, we all placed our attention on figuring out what we need to do now to build a better a future than the dystopian nightmare we’re constantly told by the media is waiting for us and our kids?

What if we disarm that narrative by focusing not on all the fear-based stuff, learning to breathe through the anxiety and panic into a place of present neutrality and calm, and then, as Takuya shows us in his story, when because of the tsunami, he meets Mio, his future wife…. we are freed to imagine allow the unimaginable: a future where love takes centre stage, with a supporting cast of compassion, communication, cooperation and where equity, egalitarianism and excellence are the pillars upon which grow.

What if those kinds of ideas where pumped into our minds by the global media every day?

What would it look like?
What kind of world would it be?

It may seem like an unrealistic, (some would say, impossible) ideal in a world ravaged by virus, war, global inequities and climate chaos; but when I stood at the shoreline of the ocean against the backdrop of what was, 3 years after the tsunami, an endless expanse of razed land where town after town once stood, I would have told you that getting over that kind of next-level trauma and physically rebuilding anything, was impossible too. I struggled to see how life and happiness could re-emerge here, but I could see, in Takuya and the people I met, that calm strength… an inner-peace even, and a kind of “knowing” that a brighter future lay ahead.

He was right.

Together, we can do anything.