In late July, when the students of Osaka Institute of Technology's Department of Architecture first arrived at the tiny port of Oharahama, an air of negativity hung over the conversation of the locals.
"They were full of questions: Why did this have to happen to them? When were they going to be able to move into temporary housing?" fourth-year student Yuki Imamura recalled the survivors saying in this settlement that was one of about 30 virtually swept off the Oshika Peninsula in Miyagi Prefecture by the March 11 tsunami.
Yet five days later, he continued, when it was time for the students to leave, the mood among the locals had changed. Visiting under the auspices of ArchiAid, a network of architects and university architecture faculties keen to assist in rebuilding the devastated Tohoku region of northeast Honshu, Imamura and his fellow students had spent their time in the village analyzing with the locals how their settlement could be rebuilt.