One and half years have past since the massive earthquake hit my hometown, Miyagi. One morning, one of my friends, Akira, from university e-mailed me with exciting news. He found the flag of our sailing team, which had swept away by the tsunami.
Akira said, one afternoon, he just felt like stopping by the gymnasium of the Elementary school, located in the area, where tsunami hit. There were still lots of peoples belongings that had been swept away by the tsunami and found by rescues, that had not been returned to their owners. Suddenly, one blue flag caught his eyes. That was the flag of Tohoku Gakuin University’s sailing team. He remembered that I used to be a member of that team and sent me a good news.
I was very surprised and posted this amazing news on my facebook status. One of the sailing team members, who was in Japan, quickly responded to my post and went to pick up the flag. Others left comments, saying that they were really excited and happy to get the flag back.
Very interestingly is that Akira had nothing to do with the area but said he just had feeling that he had to go there. Something must have led him to find the flag. The news passed on to other members of the sailing team through myself, all the way from Scotland to Japan since I now live here. I felt something special by looking at the sailing flag, because it looks like Scottish flag. It too has a white cross on blue. All I did is pass on the news via e-mail, but I was happy to help to get the flag back to the team. Because all this time I had been thinking what I could do for my hometown and felt so useless since I am physically not there.
There are still many people missing and many belongings hoping to get back to their owners. There are many arguments about how to restore the area hit by the tsunami. Most of the residents, who used to live in the area and now living in temporary housing. But they have sought to move to higher land and are not moving back to the same area. Lots of issues are piling up for us to deal with. When can we see a full recovery? It is still going to take a long time, but I believe that my hometown has the strength and courage to recover.
