Entering the tsunami zone

 This is the Hirayama Fish Market. At first glance it looked fine, and then I looked in the windows and realized that the entire first floor had been destroyed. This was the first place where I saw real damage from the tsunami.

 Here you can still see the Fish Market in the upper right corner. The road passes over a small bridge over the canal but much of the bridge was badly damaged. The bridge itself was still usable, however.

After crossing the bridge, the first thing I found was this Buddhist sight. It looked like it had been rebuilt and maybe the statues collected from wherever they ended up.

 I stood and looked at this grade school for a long time, wonder if the kids had been saved and, if so, where they had gone to avoid the tsunami - maybe the roof.

 These houses were still standing but they were a complete loss and someone was gradually tearing them down, as you can see from the piles of stuff that they were removing. It looked like they were separating anything that might be reusable from stuff that would have to be thrown away.

On the far side of the above houses, I came to this field. If you look carefully, you can see the remains of house foundations scattered throughout the grass. I imagine that a lot of people died here. Again I just stood and stared.