Kawaguchi

[sanjo 2]

Over the weekend I was visiting a friend who lives in Nagaoka. Their house was slightly damaged in the Chuetsu earthquake, but it's pretty new (one with a concrete first floor) and so it didn't take too much of a battering and they have fixed it up.

 

Anyway, yesterday we went to visit a friend of theirs who lives in Kawaguchi. You know, the 震度７ town just to the south of Nagaoka. Their house (and shop) had been totally wrecked and they are now living with friends nearby, but they took us for a walk down the main road of Kawaguchi.

 

It was pretty gruesome. From Route 17 you can't see much and apart from a few houses with scaffolding there doesn't seem much going on, but just behind the main road in the center of the small town and near the station it looks like a great big bomb has been dropped on the place. It looked like over half of the buildings were completely collapsed (actually they looked pretty much like the photo in this thread here ), and there were lots of other plots of land where buildings used to be but the area had now cleared.

 

It didn't feel right to be walking down there taking photos, so I didn't have my camera with me. The people we met along that road though were all friendly and had smiles on their faces which I thought was pretty cool considering their circumstances. While for me it is now to a certain extent just a (really bad) memory, for these peeps it's gonna be a long time before any kind of normality returns.

[oblivion 5]

How far from that town is the mountain village (Yamakoshi?) ..nearby I suppose.

[joshnii 2]

Yamakoshi-mura is in the hills behind Kawaguchi, really close yes.

[base40 0]

I'm really surprised more people didn't die there. In the end there weren't actually that many were there.