Japan tsunami: 'Not the end of the world'

It's a particularly hot summer's day. Nearly four months have passed since the tsunami wiped out the port of Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture.
In this city alone, almost 1,000 people were killed and 400 more are still missing. More than 10,000 homes destroyed. There's still rubble everywhere. The foul smell of dead fish attracting flies and mosquitoes.
We arrive at nearby Shishiori high school where hundreds of evacuees live. Normal school activities are already taking place. The girls are playing softball in what used to be a huge athletic field. But the majority of it is now used for temporary housing. Other evacuees live in the gymnasium. Each of them has a little space - just enough for one single bed mattress - surrounded by cardboard.

Masashi Ito has decided to live in Kesennuma and give free massages

"Tooi tokoro gokuroh sama," they greet me. "Thank you for visiting us. You must be tired after a long journey."
An old lady gives me an energy drink. She reminds me of my late grandmother, who - even when she was living on a small pension - insisted on giving me some pocket money.
I was nervous that they would feel I was being intrusive. But then she tells me how nice it is to see young people.
Kesennuma and other cities in the region have seen their working age population leaving for jobs elsewhere - way before the earthquake. That means even at the evacuation centre you rarely see people of my age, other than volunteers.
That's who I came here to meet. Young volunteers who gathered from all over the country. Growing up in Japan, our generation was often criticised for being selfish and losing the traditional spirit of harmony and helping one another. But this disaster has shown that the spirit has been passed on. Many first-time volunteers in their 20s and 30s are spending their days off bringing food and helping to get rid of the rubble.
One of them, 34-year-old Masashi Ito, has decided to live here and give massages for free. His life sums up the freedom that our postwar generation has had. After graduating from university, he decided that he didn't want to work as a businessman so he went overseas, travelling for 12 years with the little money that he made here and there. It's an option that the older generation never had. But this crisis changed his priorities. "This is an unprecedented disaster", he tells me. "I want to do something for Japan."

Nobutsugu Shimizu was assigned a suicide mission at age 19

It's a feeling I share - I never expected to see my wealthy home country in the news for so long for a humanitarian disaster.
But I keep remembering what my interviewee told me back in Tokyo. Nobutsugu Shimizu is an 85-year-old company chairman who survived the Second World War. He was assigned to go on a suicide mission on the first of September 1945 when he was only 19. But luckily for him, the war ended in mid-August.
"It was really tough back then," he tells me. "All the major cities were bombed out. Japan was extremely poor. If you compare it with today, even after the earthquake, it's worlds apart."
I look around at the evacuation centre and I see what Mr Shimizu means. There's a plasma TV on the stage. Everyone is keeping in touch with friends on smartphones. Or playing the latest Nintendo 3DS.
"Don't worry," Mr Shimizu says. "People are talking about this disaster as if it's the end of the world … but it's not."

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