Little Tatto

JAPAN’S famed emphasis on social harmony is very much in evidence in even the most dire circumstances — at evacuation centers filled with shell-shocked quake and tsunami survivors.

From the sharing of tasks among volunteers to the neat arrangement of shoes outside the living areas, life in the shelters set up in the wake of Friday’s disasters is orderly and peaceful.

“I have never been in a disaster area before so I didn’t know what to expect. In the movies, you always see people running around screaming but here at the center, it’s really calm,” Canadian student Jouvon Evans said.

Evans, a 24-year-old from Toronto who is studying in Tokyo, was traveling by train to hard-hit Sendai city with six friends for a holiday when the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami changed her plans.

Since then, she has been sleeping at a community center in Natori city outside Sendai with her friends, including 21-year-old Alice Caffyn, who hails from London.

Caffyn expressed her amazement at the kindness of strangers and the relative ease with which area residents have set up emergency operations without much obvious help from local government officials.

“Obviously it’s very calm. People have been really kind to us,” Caffyn said.

“There is a group of older women who are sitting next to us. They live in the local area. Every time they come back, they bring us prepared meals.”

“Apparently in a lot of other centers, provisions are hard to come by so I think we have been quite lucky,” said the Briton.

“This feels like a haven to us.”