The most horrible shot

I took today I think.
I not sure if I can descibe all the shock I experienced here today but this was the best I could do.
For guys who are not familiar with this place, this is a town called Rikuzen Takata in Iwate Prefecture with a population of 25000 before the earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, 2011. 1500 lost there lives and still over 300 are missing. You can see how high the tsunami was because up to the second floor of the building has been severly damaged by the waives. Low sea level areas are all like this. At least it's fairly clean now but nothing left. Difficult to imagine that there were people living their own lives nothing different from us until the disaster.

I came here as a volunteer today, helping a local lady rebuild her garden with 37 others. She was thanking each of us for the help and giving away tea when we became thirsty. I can easily imagine that see has been facing several problems to start a new life here after losing everything. But see was looking forward to a new start and was futuristic about what she would like to do with the new garden. It was actually us the volunteers who were encouraged by her optimism and her welcome to visitors.

The volunteers were very motivated on providing any kind of help. People from all over Japan mainly participating by themselves. It was a pleasure to work with these people who share a common purpose which is "we would like to help".
Although everyone was tired, we enjoyed the dinner and drinks following it by introducing ourselves and talking over the reasons for being part of this tour.

It was a wonderful way of spending one of my precious holidays being here.