Yesterday, some small tsunami waves hit the Pacific coast of the Aomori Prefecture (that's Misawa). They were the result of the Chile earthquake a few days ago. 3-meter-high waves were predicted, but as far as I can tell from the Japan Meterological Agency website, we only got about .5-meter-high waves.
There were loudspeaker announcements all over town yesterday, and the city decided to evacuate all residents east of Route 338 (what we call the beach road, but it actually runs up along the coast all the way to the top of the island). We are several kilometers inland, so we weren't worried, but it was exciting to think that a tsunami was hitting the coast at about 2:10 p.m. yesterday.
This morning, we were all curious what the beach and ocean would look like today, so at low tide (about 9:30 a.m.), we took an impromptu field trip up to Miss Veedol Beach, a few kilometers north of our house.
beach preservation measures in the background--rocks and concreteThere were still some pretty big waves,
and the beach, instead of being littered with trash and treasures from the sea, had been swept clean.
This is very unusual. Our experience with beaches in Japan has led us to expect piles of junk at the high tide line. This includes plastic (trash) and glass fishing floats (treasure!), lots of rope and net and other fishing paraphenelia, old soda cans, and driftwood.
It's everywhereIt's generally a big mix. But this morning, it looked like the waves had come in much higher on the beach than usual and washed all the trash back into the ocean.
No glass balls today. And very few shells. We did come up with a few that were worth bringing home.
And had some fun in the brisk winter breeze.
Breezy!
snow melting away from the beach preservation concrete--it's almost all gone now, winter will be over soon
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