Mami's Cousin's Experience of the Earthquake.

Last Saturday night, Mami and I spoke to our cousin, Kazu, on Skype. Good name for a cousin, don't you think?

Kazu is a densha (slower suburban train) driver in Miyagi prefecture. He has just built a new house which houses his wife and three girls, his widowed mother and grandmother (who is also Mami's grandmother).

Fortunately for Kazu, he was not working on the day of the quake. I say fortunately as one of his colleagues was driving a densha which had just left a station when the quake hit. The train was derailed and his friend suffered two broken legs and two broken arms!

The town Kazu lives in is Kurikoma city and although it is inland and was under no threat from the tsunami, the quake caused a lot of structural damage. Kazu is off work until April, as the densha tracks were twisted and warped by the quake and will have to be replaced in many areas. Due to the scale of the repairs there are not enough tracks on hand to immediately do the repairs and tracks will have to be imported from overseas. The shinkansen (bullet train) situation is even worse, with the tracks and other structural damage to the lines north of Tokyo not expected to be repaired until May.

On a persnal level, Kazu injured his arm when he thrown to the ground during the quake. He cannot straighten his arm and has been unable to see a doctor as he has no petrol to get into town. It sounds like he could have a chipped bone near his elbow and it is definitely hampering his movements. While on Skype he walked around the house, showing us the video of the cracks and structural damage to his new house.This house was under construction when we came here last time, so it is less than two years old. Kazu had insurance for earthquakes up to magnitude 6, so he is worried about how much, if anything at all, he get back from the insurance.

It is these personal anecdotes which bring home how widespread this disaster is and how long it will take for Japan to return to anything like normal. But the news reports, on screen and in print, all praise the Japanese people for their cooperation and willingness to help each other in this time of crisis.