The extent of the devastation is what I found most devastating, and the only way I could think of demonstrating it was by letting the video camera roll for a few minutes as we journeyed through town in the minibus. Thus, nothing happens in these 3 minute videos, except, hopefully, the scale of the problem becomes sadly apparent. In Ishinomaki itself, we passed through about 20 minutes of this kind of thing each morning, and then travelled on to the annihilated fishing villages. While the large dusty spaces round the houses may look normal to people from the USA, in Japan houses should be crammed together, and the vegetation lush.
Uncut video of Ishinomaki town:
Apart from devastation and the estates of temporary housing, the other feature of present day Ishinomaki is the miles of sorted debris. This part seems to be cars and metal and cars:
Download the plugin if you don't have it, and then you can zoom in to see the high resolution satellite images of Ishinomaki.
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Koamikurahama, annihilated Fishing village on Oshika peninsula. This video has been lightly edited to cut down the really very boring footage of the tsunami wall:
"A" marks Koamikurahama. Zoom out to see the Oshika peninsula. Ishinomaki is to the NW.
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