Pictures

There is a longer account of my weekend coming, but currently Central and Eastern Japan are experiencing "rolling blackouts" where a section of the country has a blackout for three hours in order to shift more power to the northeast. The eastern half of the country is apparently running on low power as all the nuclear plants have been shut down for a while. We're being warned that there is a high chance there will be another really big aftershock (as high as a 7) sometime in the next few days and, I assume they will resume operation after that.

So, in an effort to get something up before then, I'm just going to put up some pictures of Mito and save the narrative for the afternoon when power should be back.

First, my apartment. Miraculously, nothing was broken but it did look like someone had searched the place for secret documents. Sadly, you can't see my pile of scratch paper strewn about the floor in front of my desk.

My refridgerator was snugly in that corner in the morning. It was about equally far from the back wall as it was from the side.

All of my dishes except for the saucepan and one mug were in the sink. Most of them had fallen from a small shelf above the sink and still, nothing was broken. That frying pan had been on the front burner when I left home in the morning.

My school. The clock there is at a slightly odd angle because its insides were thrown out during the quake.

This is what my teachers room looked like post quake. This was taken on Sunday though, and this was the only section that had been untouched.

This is the store I went to. After waiting in line for two hours before they opened, they wheeled out tables of food with signs marking everything as either 100 or 200 yen and saying that we were only allowed two things from each table. I'm pretty sure everyone took two 2 liter water bottles from the first table for as long as there was water.

This is how long the line was when I left. That green sign is the front.

My water was back at a trickle on Sunday morning, and after going outside I discovered why it was just a trickle. Apparenlty a pipe had ruptured somewhere in the neighbourhood.

This is about 50 yards from my apartment.

The first time I walked by this building I didn't have my camera, but you could see the sun setting through the corner of the building.

There are a lot of traditional style homes in my neighborhood and most of them had chest high cinder-block walls around their yard/garden area. Most of them ended like this one.

Glass storefront on my way to downtown.

For those of you who have read my sister's blog post from when she visited Mito, this is the parking lot where the Mercedes-Benz firetruck was parked.

They have been working on this sidewalk since I moved to Mito, so I was glad to see it escaped pretty unfazed.


Downtown got hit a little harder.

Large pillar for decorative purposes.

Some shattered windows.

This building is between my company's office and city hall.

This is the edge of a courtyard between city hall and the city auditorium where the chorus competion was held my first day of work in Mito.

There were a lot of sinkholes in the areas around manhole covers.

There must be something about how they build roads to make this happen so evenely, but the left lane made a clean break with the right lane and is now half a foot higher than the right.

Som men trying to take down a damaged overhang safely.

This is hard to see, but these cars aren't parked. At the end of this block (if you can make out the stoplight) is a gas station and these people are waiting in line...

...a line that stretches around the block