 Misconceptions !
We were very surprised when we got to Ojiya this year because we did not see a lot of damage from the earthquake a year ago. At least no a lot of obvious damage. This could mean several things. The Japanese are amazing when it comes to making repairs, and the situation was blown out of proportion by speculation from people who were not even there. I think it was both. As we drove around we could see a lot of work that was done in a year. When we went to the city offices with Hosokai to get a pass to go up into Yamakoshi and Mushigame, we saw a building full of engineers working on a massive plan for future repairs. It was awsome!!! One of the most obvious areas of devastation still left is where the mountain collapsed on the Koi Statue, the highway and the train tunnel. The train tracks have been repaired, but the highway is still buried under thousands of tons of rock and soil. We saw a plan to restore that area with a new highway, a terraced hillside and a new turnout for sight seers. A campain was also started last year that was aimed to boost moral and hope for the future. Erwinsan's Avatar is a picture of a pin that we (Dunkel, Peters and Perret) picked up in a store outside of the Koi Museum. The pin says "Never Give Up". This speaks volumes for the effort the Japanese are putting in to rebuild and restore the faith and good fortune to the area we call "Koi Mecca".
The other part of the story is that things did get blown out of proportion. I left the day before the earthquake, and because we were trying to schedule the shipping of our fish, we followed very closely all of the reports out of the area. These reports came from threads on Koi - Bito, Koiphen, the NI board and a few Japanese web sites. From day one we heard reports that Torazo was buried under water, Torazo was wiped out completely, Marusada went down the hill behind him, Igarashi Kazuto was wiped out, Shinoda is gone and the list goes on and on and on. This gave us, as well as others no hope at all and we all thought that the area we all love, was gone for ever. As time passed we began to get a better picture of what really was going on and it looked less and less like the reports we read on the Koi Forums we all use.
Once we drove up into Yamakoshi and Mushigame, we saw a lot of devastation. Roads are totally missing, roads are partially missing, homes are missing, home are hanging on hillsides waiting for demolition and there are obvious signs from the hundreds of landslides. There was devastation!!! What I began to have trouble with though, was the fact that we drove to see Igarashi Kazuto, Shinoda, Torazo, Tanaka, Otsuka, Hiroi, Hiroi Masaki, Kaneko and others, and they were all there open for business. Now, don't get me wrong, I know they all lost fish, and I know that they all had repairs to make. One report that we read last year was that the hill and homes above Igarahi Kazuto came down into his holding tanks and knocked his house off of its foundation. There was no sign of this. It did not look like he had to make any repairs. In fact he still had most of our fish that we bought from him last year. Torazo was another one that had no real damage. The river next to him did fill up with debris and he go about a 1/4" of water on his office floor, but there was no structural damage and his repairs involved filling cracks in the concrete flatwork around his property. This is a far cry from the origional reports that Torazo is gone! We found this to be the case time and time again as we drove around. Rumors can spread panick and misconceptions.
We did run into breaders, such as Marusada, that did suffer tremendous losses to there homes and property. It is very sad, and the burden they have is overwhelming. My point is that I was very surprised at the true picture as compared to the one I got from all the reports and speculation on the Koi forums.
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10-30-2005
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