Japan's Astonishing Recovery

Above, Nagasaki, Kyushu, Japan.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The United Kingdom's Travel Weekly website has posted a special report on Japan's "astonishing recovery" from last year's earthquake and tsunami.

The article states:

Japan has recovered astonishingly from a disaster of Biblical proportions just over a year ago that combined a category-nine earthquake, a tsunami and a meltdown in not one but three nuclear reactors. 

Perhaps only the southeast Asian tsunami of 2005 surpassed it in scale in modern times. Yet Tokyo appears unchanged, and was unfazed by regular small tremors through the past week. The rail system and rest of the infrastructure of Japan has long been back to normal. 

To the north of Tokyo, the region of Tohoku which bore the brunt of the quake and tsunami on its Pacific coast appears surprisingly at ease.

Reporter Ian Taylor is in Japan for the World Travel and Tourism Council summit meetings that are now being held in Sendai and Tokyo.  He saw no evidence of the disaster while riding the shinkansen in the Tohoku region:

The view from the 'bullet train' on the two-hour journey between Tokyo and Sendai, a city of one million at the heart of Tohoku, offers little or no sight of reconstruction, let alone destruction - although this cannot be the case on the coast where the tsunami swept inland for eight kilometres, smashing and washing away homes, workplaces and up to 20,000 lives.

 To read the full article, go here.