Earthquake Diary 94

 On this stroll, I walked east to the Sendai Bypass Road and turn south on it. The first building I saw after crossing the river was an amusement center, a place with electronic game machines. Many of the windows were broken and it did not appear that it would open again soon. In many commercial buildings like this the ceilings came down in the quake, breaking pipes and connectors in the sprinkler systems. The entire inside was then soaked. I have heard that this happened in numerous stores.

 This picture shows one reason why the gas company had, and is still having, so much trouble restoring the gas supply. The large building is the local headquarters of the gas company. You can see the large crane carrying building supplies to the roof. It is not so obvious in this view but there was extensive damage to the outside, particularly the upper floors, and to the interior, which I could see through the broken windows.

 The usual blue tarps cover the front doors and the wall of this building.

 In the distance, right in the middle of the picture, you can see a row of blue tarps which are covering a banking that has collapsed below a row of houses.

 Here is a closer look at it.
As I have said, Japan, at least the Tohoku area, is now covered with blue plastic tarps, held together by tape. Tape is also holding many other things together. Here it is a large window.

 Today there are two new symbols of the return to normalcy: the shinkansen (Bullet Train) will start running between Tokyo and Sendai and the Sendai subway system will run over the entire route (no more free buses for the last four stations.

Also today is the first home game since the quake for Vegalta, the Sendai soccer team. In a couple of hours I will walk to Izumi Chuo to have lunch with my friend Keith, after which we will take in the game together.

Today's newspaper again had lots of advertizing inserts and this morning our mailbox contained a half dozen flyers in addition to the paper. I should point out for the American readers that Japanese mailboxes can be used for other purposes than official mail. Ours contains the mail, newspapers, ads, and notes and packages that are left by friends.