Disembarking the ferry we headed for the small town of Tono which is located in a river valley nestled between two mountain ranges. We were so impressed with the location that we decided to stay a couple of nights. With an early on our first morning we decided to drive just outside of the town to see Tono Furasato village which is a cluster of relocated original farmhouses from the middle of the Edo period (1603- 1868) which have been carefully preserved

We also visited the Tono Folktale museum which had been converted from an old Sake brewery and incorporated an adjacent historic Ryokan ( small hotel) to showcase the mysterious folktales for which the region of Tono has become famous. First published in 1910 “The Legends of Tono” (Tono Monogatari) is a famous book containing 119 stories and was written by Kunio Yanagita an academic who specialised in folklore and became fascinated by the Tono tales after meeting a local writer and making many visits to the area and staying at the Ryokan Yanagita

Leaving Tono we headed for the Tsunami Memorial Park at Ishinomaki Minamihama which proved to be a very sobering visit. The Memorial park was constructed to commemorate the lives lost and to pass down memories and lessons learned from the Great East Japan earthquake (Tsunami) which occurred at 2.46 pm on March 11th 2011. Ishinomaki city was the most affected by the disaster with 4000 casualties with the Minamihama cho, Kadanowaki cho and Hibarino cho areas worst affected and another 500 people losing their lives due to the fire caused by the tsunami that followed the earthquake. The park has kept the framework of the community streets from before the disaster as the main pathways around the park. The museum building houses information display panels on the earthquake disaster, videos of the actual tsunami and survivors stories. The museum was designed with the glazed wall at one end of the roofline being set at the same height as the peak Tsunami wave that hit the shore, a height of 9m! The clear message from all of this is the only way to save your life is to runaway .

Anyone interested in more detail on the earthquake and tsunami NHK WORLD has a very good video of the disaster as it unfolded the following link will take you there. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/3016087/