via Mainichi
A year after a large earthquake here killed 185 people, the Japanese owner of a local restaurant has reopened his business and vows to "support the (Japanese) reconstruction from here." On Feb. 22, 2011, Masakazu Takeuchi, now 39, had been cooking in the kitchen of his restaurant not far from Christchurch Cathedral in the city center when the magnitude-6.3 temblor hit.
Takeuchi ran outside to find people screaming and collapsed buildings kicking up clouds of white dust. The entire area was subsequently closed off, and remains so today. Where Takeuchi's restaurant once stood is now a vacant lot. When Takeuchi began taking steps toward rebuilding his business three months after the quake, what helped him overcome challenges were the exchanges he had with Mieko Yamato, a teacher at a private elementary school in the Fukushima Prefecture capital of Fukushima who had been accompanying her students to Christchurch every summer for language training.
Published on Thursday, 23 February 2012
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