Tomorrow, March 11th marks the 1st anniversary of the Japan's Tōhoku earthquake & the tsunami.

Tomorrow March 11^th marks the 1st anniversary of the Japan's Tōhoku earthquake & the tsunami. As I wrote before, I was in Japan at that time, visiting my mother who was living in Osaka, Japan -- which was unaffected since it was located some 600 km west of the disaster area.

On the afternoon of Friday, March 11^th 2011, I went to the dentist office in a neighboring town by train. At 2:30 PM, I sat on the dentist's reclining chair and opened my mouth wide so that the doctor could drill a bad cavity in my right upper mauler tooth.

The doctor was a gentle person in his 70's and used extremely gentle approach. So, I knew that I didn't need to scream for pain but still, I was furious since I haven't visited any dentists for two decades (!).

When the doctor started drilling, I closed my eyes and just hoped the time would pass fast. Then about 15 minutes into the treatment, suddenly, he stopped drilling.
"Did you feel earthquake?"
He asked the nurse who was standing right beside him. The nurse replied,
"Yes, I did, a little bit."
Then doctor asked me.
"Did you feel that too?"
I said,
"No, I didn't feel anything but numb vibration in my mouth."
Then he smiled at me and returned to the treatment.

I left the office about an hour later and went to a nearby shopping mall. At late afternoon, the supermarket in the mall was filled with customers for grocery shopping -- lively and noisy as usual.

After the shopping, I took a bus and got home around 5 PM. As soon as I opened the door, my mother ran into me. She told me that the gigantic earthquake hit the northern Japan include Tokyo around three o'clock. The quake sent a massive Tsunami, which crashed, into the Pacific coast, wiped out entire towns and villages. In Tokyo, many buildings were burning out of control. Hundreds of people died or went missing. I hurried into the living room and watched the Tsunami scenes on TV, speechless with disbelief.

That earthquake occurred at 2:46 PM – exact time when my dentist felt tremors. The quake was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since late 1800s. Tokyo was recorded as a magnitude upper 5 and it shook Osaka too - a magnitude 1.

Then I remember that I was scheduled to go to Tokyo the day after. The hotel was already booked for five nights.Tokyo is roughly 500 km to the north-east of Osaka, less than 3 hours travel by bullet train.

"You have to cancel the trip. Tokyo is too dangerous now."
Mother insisted. Confused, I was not sure what to do. I was thinking of the people whom I was supposed to meet there.
"I'll call them and decide tomorrow morning."
I told mother so, and two of us kept staring at TV the rest of the evening.

Soon all regular TV programs were canceled. Instead, special programs to report on what was going on in hard hit area were broadcast live. All the regular TV commercials disappeared too. (Because their contents were seen inadequate to the terrible situation.) That way continued for the next two weeks.

My mother was diagnosed with liver cancer a year ago and undergoing chemotherapy at that time. Her spirit was normal but it was obvious that she was weaker physically day by day besides loosing her hair from the therapy. She no longer had energy to go out for grocery shopping or walking her dog. However her mind was still fully functioning. She liked to read newspapers and watch news programs daily.

On that day, I remembered that my mother was worried so much of the possible Fukushima nuclear power plant melts down. She seemed excited when she saw the Japanese military helicopters dropping seawater onto the plant's reactor for cooling down. I myself was rather depressed facing too much sadness on papers and TV screens all day long.

So I decided to escape.

Originally, I had planned to take pictures of Kyoto area during this visit. Kyoto was just half an hour away from Osaka by bullet train. So, next couple of days, I took train and walked around tourist spots in Kyoto such as famous temples & shrines and photographed people there.

Early spring in Kyoto was so peacefully beautiful and totally unaffected by the disaster right happening in the northern Japan. Looking at those happy, care-free faces of tourists as well as residents who continued with their normal lives, I felt like I was living in a different dimension away from the other half of Japan islands ---- like Heaven & Hell.

Within the same week, I went to photograph the UFJ (Universal Studios Japan) amusement park in Osaka too. That was just five days after the disaster but the place was filled with fun-loving couples and families. I went the famous shopping arcade- Dotonbori too. Dotonbori is a home of ‘Kuidaore’ with various eateries and the famous giant signs such as moving crab, puffer fish, dragon, etc.( Kuidaore - a Japanese word meaning roughly “to ruin oneself by extravagance in food.”) The streets were packed with numerous gourmet restaurants, eateries and lively young tourists.

Then two weeks later, on Mrach 25^th, I finally went to Tokyo for five days and saw the reality. The capital city where I spent 8 years of my youth looked depressingly dark and empty. People seemed under great stress as they moved about in train stations and streets beneath traffic lights and advertising boards that had been switched off due to the power shortage. In station, some elevators, escalators and moving walkways also often turned off for saving energy policy.

Since many bars and restaurants cut short their business hours, many had to give up their nightlife too. Ginza – Tokyo’s answer to Champs-Elysées - the biggest and fanciest shopping area in Japan looked dark & empty too.

The people I met confessed how they were suffered from traumatic memory of a huge tremor set their buildings swaying wildly on March 11 and continuingly suffered from daily aftershock. Many people wore masks to avoid pollution, or allergy, or radiation, whatever… and their eyes seemed blank or wandering from fear, anxiety or fatigue. (I took street shots around Shinjuku stations and I couldn’t help but include those curiously masked people).

In Tokyo stores, I saw bottled waters were often sold out and vegetables produced in Fukushima prefectures were always left unsold. In station gates, there were various groups of charitable organizations holding donation boxes, standing and asking commuters for donation in aid to tsunami victims.

As I felt sorry to my people, I was scared too when I experienced a small tremor while I was staying at the hotel near Shinjuku. ( When I checked in, I made sure to ask the hotel employees for emergency evacuation plan.) The hotel was popular among foreign tourists, especially low-budget travelers. But that normally packed place looked empty too.

When I returned to Osaka five days later, I felt relieved as well as felt like that I returned to the different dimension of the Japan Island once again. In Osaka, everything seemed normal as usual.

On April 1^st, I took flight to JFK from Narita. As soon as I returned to NYC, I was overwhelmed by a very warm welcome of my American friends who were sincerely worried about me. Because many people here seemed genuinely believe that entire Japan was swallowed by Tsunami, I had to explain to them that the islands of Japan is so narrow and stretched long from north to south, so that the devastation in the northern Japan did not affect to the western area – my home town.

Since I returned, I have learned so much about radiation and realize there is much more to learn. I recognized that the radiation leaks problem at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant could not be able to solve so soon – probably would take forever. The disaster would not stay only in the Fukushima prefecture, but would might become the national (or international) disaster as the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

In May 25^th 2011, I returned to Japan once again to be with my mother in the terminal ward of the hospital. She passed on June 4^th. After the funeral and cleaning up of her house, I visited Tokyo again.

Three months after the disaster, thousands of evacuees in northern Japan were still living in temporary houses, while the area that had been directly struck will take years to redevelop. Even in Tokyo, some signs of abnormality were still obvious such as extinguished lighting of station names or the lack of air conditioning in train stations that had been turned off for scheduled power savings. On TV many programs were focusing on how to avoid immediate danger from radiation poisoning and Geiger counters were becoming popular household items for detecting radioactivity in local neighborhoods. In stores consumers carefully avoided purchasing vegetables or dairy products produced in hard hit prefectures.

But still, under the bright sunshine of June, I found that people in Tokyo were genuinely enjoying shopping and roaming happily about just like any other time. So by now, I believes in the strength of the Japanese people who remain undaunted by the havoc nature has wrecked on their homeland as they rebuild their nation step by step.