In the days following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami I tried a couple of aborted attempts to get up north. During the first two days I scrambled to get a car - this was almost impossible as all rental cars in Tokyo were booked out. I managed to get a hold of a friend's sports car and get a full tank of gasoline after queuing for an hour or so. In the meantime another journalist friend managed to get a much bigger van. Then the first explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant happened and we decided to wait until it became clearer as to what the situation was. On the Thursday that followed the earthquake we eventually made our way up the Tohoku expressway with a special pass (at this point the expressway was closed to everyone except for emergency workers, NGOs and journalists). Journalist Michael Penn, a crew from London and I spent the night in our van at a truck stop and then the next day made our way to Natori, south-east of Sendai were we interviewed locals returning to area for the first time since the disaster. Shortly after I filed a report for Global Post.
The video can be viewed at the Global Post website here.
- Michael Condon
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