On March 11th 2011 at 14:46 (Japan time) the Great East Japan Earthquake hit the Tohoku region of Japan and caused a tsunami that wrecked thousands of lives.

Two years later, those lives are slowly being pieced back together.

If you have the time, here are a collection of links and stories that sum up where Tohoku is at today.

A survey of Tohoku ( Read more... )

When I volunteered in Tohoku last March, there was a wonderful lady there who cooked the most wonderful meals for the volunteers. By that time she was just inviting groups over to her house occasionally for dinner and dropping off odd things at the volunteer house, but in the immediate aftermath of 3/11 (and for the next six months) she was ( Read more... )

A few hundred yards from the seashore, on top of a small mound of earth, Japanese flags flutter in the brisk, chill breeze. There is a giant fir tree that is twisted and mangled but still alive, an ancient standing stone and some wooden stakes inscribed with prayers.

( Read more )

This is a news story about what the people of Hawaii have been doing. I'm sorry I only have a link for it. I will also share a link to their website as well ( Read more... )

This short documentary was filmed in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, in November. There are interviews with survivors and those working to rebuild the city after it was devastated by the tsunami.

It's only fifteen minutes long, and I can't recommend watching this enough. It's such a real view of what is still happening there.


Then and Now from Paul ( Read more... )

The Meteorological Agency said Thursday that 6,757 aftershocks were felt in Japan after the March 11 disaster through Dec 31 ( Read more... )

...Search continues at primary school destroyed by tsunami more than 9 months agoISHINOMAKI, Miyagi--Parents are still searching for missing children more than nine months after a tsunami inundated an Ishinomaki City primary school following the Great East Japan Earthquake in March ( Read more... )

Eight months after the Great East Japan Earthquake and as temperatures drop with the onset of winter, police continue to search for the missing, having pledged to return as many people as possible to their families ( Read more... )

Cherry trees to mark tsunamiLocal residents in areas hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake have launched projects to plant cherry trees or place stone monuments to mark the reach of the March 11 tsunami ( Read more... )

KESENNUMA, Miyagi--The city of Kesennuma, hit hard by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has created a multilingual Facebook account to share locals' stories and pictures of the disaster and their reconstruction efforts with people around the world.

The city is the first disaster-hit municipality to provide such information in foreign languages on ( Read more... )