On a cold Friday afternoon, life for millions in Japan would be changed in the span of just a few minutes. On March 11, 2011, northeastern Japan was struck by one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history. The magnitude 9 tremor caused massive damage up and down the country’s northeastern coast, with strong shaking felt several hundred kilometers away. Soon after the shaking subsided, the coastline was then hit by a devastating tsunami, which completely destroyed dozens of towns and caused over fifteen thousand deaths. The damage from the earthquake and tsunami, as well as from the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant soon after, forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate their homes and was estimated by the World Bank to have cost over 20 trillion yen (approx. $190 billion).