Once you get off the plane in Tokyo and past customs and immigration, the wreckage is everywhere to be seen — on television, at least. In the arrivals hall of Narita airport, on a huge flat screen high definition television, I watched scenes of the extraordinary devastation from coastal towns and villages as I waited for my bus ticket. My ordinary little TV screen in Shanghai, where I live, didn’t do it justice. The stunning images from NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, of the northeastern coastal towns completely destroyed by the tsunami that devastated them, had everyone’s attention. People — Japanese and foreigners alike — were quiet, watching.
The traffic into town on Monday, slightly before rush hour, was thin. Just three days after one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history, a lot of people took to heart the government’s admonishment to stay home. Though Tokyo was practically untouched by the magnitude 8.9 earthquake — a function both of its distance from the epicenter and the fact that it’s perhaps the most earthquake proof place in the world — it’s a city in mourning. And just three days after the fact, that’s as it should be.
