NEWSWORTHY
The restoration of infrastructure crippled in the disasters may be nearly completed after eight years, but the rebuilding of people's lives disrupted by the catastrophe, including psychological support for them, remains an ongoing challenge.
Tohoku residents still haunted by memories of devastating 3/11 triple disaster
Despite the passage of time, their stories are still heart-wrenching.
A new approach to volunteering in Tohoku
When Angela Ortiz describes what it felt like to return to Aomori Prefecture five days after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, she uses words like "horror," "incredulous disbelief" and "intense curiosity." The 36-year-old American lived in Aomori between the ages of ...
Japanese government adopts revised policy for disaster reconstruction
The government adopted Friday a revised basic policy for the reconstruction of areas affected by the March 2011 disasters, which features the establishment of a successor body to the Reconstruction Agency. The existing agency is to be dissolved by the end of March 2021, 10 ...
Many residents in the hardest-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima are struggling to repay emergency relief loans that they received in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, a Jiji Press survey of related municipalities showed. In the three prefectures, a total ...
'Reconstruction Olympics' theme said not to have gathered momentum
The heads of 21 local governments in Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi prefectures said in the survey that the “reconstruction Olympics” theme has yet to fully catch on among the public.
Tsunami-hit Japanese town completes divisive demolition of former municipal office
A town in Iwate Prefecture on Wednesday completed the demolition of its former municipal office building — where its mayor and 27 other workers were killed in the tsunami triggered by the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 — even though some ...
Japanese government calls for safe use of snow blowers, citing fatal accidents last winter
With the snowfall season having properly begun in the Hokkaido and Tohoku regions, the Consumer Affairs Agency is calling for snow blowers to be used in an appropriate manner to ensure safety in the wake of a series of fatal accidents last winter. A snow ...
Comedy duo Sandwich Man deliver laughter to promote Rugby World Cup
Beyond making their audience laugh with punchlines, comedy duo Sandwich Man have two other missions. One is supporting the Tohoku area's recovery from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, something personal to them as Sendai natives. The other is promoting the Rugby World Cup as ...
The Michinoku Coastal Trail: Tohoku's recovery in action
The Michinoku Coastal Trail is a 2013 initiative by Japan's environment ministry to rejuvenate disaster-stricken Tohoku through ecotourism. At 700-kilometers long, it winds through protected forest, bucolic villages and along dramatic coastlines.
Fukushima marathons drawing runners supporting area's reconstruction
Marathon races in Fukushima Prefecture are drawing a growing number of runners looking to support the area's reconstruction from the March 2011 nuclear crisis. In the town of Tomioka, where the government's evacuation order was partially lifted in the spring of last year, the number ...
Japan's Reconstruction Agency hopes to keep tourism subsidy program for Tohoku alive in fiscal 2019
The agency aims to include some ¥3.3 billion in funds for the initiative in its budget request, about the same amount budgeted in the previous year.
