This is going to have to be a shorter entry because for some reason today really tired me out! The iPhone says I walked 23 km, but that’s including some incidental walking to/from stations.
The seaside from Iwanuma to Natori is a quiet place with grasslands, hills for evacuation (and for kids and dogs to joyfully march up/down, fir trees that survived the tsunami and rows of saplings that will one day become a forest. What this place needs is context, and the context is: once people lived here, but then the tsunami came. That was what was written on a stone marker next to an enormous gingko tree that had withstood the tsunami. The people of this village made the decision to move elsewhere, but this ginkgo stays to watch over where our village once stood. We honor the memory of those volunteer firefighters who died helping others and those who died while trying to escape. I wiped a sudden bout of tears out of my eyes and smiled to greet a couple coming down from the nearby hill with their vaguely German Shepherd mix-looking puppy, trying with 1000% of his might to reach me for energetic puppy greetings.
A fox bounded around in the grass and failed to notice me until I said something (“hey fox”) then disappeared into the brush.
Halfway through my walk I realized I’d been walking directly next to the ocean but had been unable to get even a glimpse because of the tsunami wall. I found access and stairs so walked along the wall for a bit as well.
Saw some Rooks on the way to Mitazono Station. They didn’t like me looking at them so the pic is pathetic, but you can just barely see the white bit on some of their beaks.
My Michinoku 