My sister lives (I hope) in Sendai - 1st city hit by tsunami

I am very happy for you with your sister being OK must be a great relief.

I feel for you losing your daughter, we understand what you went through then and will continue to do so

This will probably be the final update.

My sister and her two girls flew into a QLD airport today, their plane was 4 hours late leaving Japan because it was very hard to get aircrew willing to go to Japan to man the flight out.

She was picked up by a friend she met in Sendai, another Aus family that lived there until mid last year, with whom they became very close. She and the girls are now safe at the friend's house.

I think that they are in the best place for now because they are with very close friends who know Sendai, who they shared their lives in Sendai with. I think it will help them to talk about what happenned.

Thankfully they didn't really see any of the mass devastation, they where outside the tsunami area and did not go rubber knecking to see what had happenned.

My Japanese brother in law stayed behind as he has a business there to attend to and his family, including 4 siblings and their families who all live within the 80 K exclusion zone around Fukushima.

I hope they will all come out of this unharmed.

Steve

Good news, thinking of you and yours, Bob @ Mary

Just spoke to my sister tonight and thought I would share some of the things she said about life in Sendai and surrounds.

On the day they drove out of Sendai it snowed, lots of people with no running water got buckets of snow to melt and use to flush toilets etc. A friend of hers who has a gaiger counter has told her that her toilet is radioactive. The snow must have brought the radiation to ground all over the area but it washed away except for areas where it was concentrated.

She also said that the families in Japan are all about the family land and the whole family goes home on the three big holidays they have each year. Her husbands family comes from within the 80K zone around Fukushimi. No-one is going home for the holidays, the matriarch of the family rang her and asked if they would come but Ginny had to say no, the poor old granny, along with everyone in the area, has been given a gaiger counter and she said to Ginny "it was ok today", the poor dear, almost made me cry for her.

Lots of families that live within the 3K zone were allowed into there homes for two hours recently to get the few things they needed out. It was the first time they have been back and they will never be allowed back again.

All the people affected by the quake are basically buggered. There are just too many people to help. Farmers, fishermen and everything else has been wiped out.

My sister is looking at teaching jobs in Australia or elsewhere in Asia.