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Located about 30 minutes by train north from Umeda – the central commercial district of Osaka – Minoh is a tourist spot where you can enjoy lush nature and soak
Returning to the scene of Japan’s worst disaster a decade on
Credit: Rob Gilhooly
Ten years ago Shinichiro Hiratsuka watched as, under a gunmetal-grey sky, the first, small, tarpaulin-wrapped bodies were brought up the embankment from Okawa Elementary School and laid gently on the road. Singly, or in small knots, the waiting parents stepped forward, pulling back the makeshift shrouds to reveal the faces of the dead children. Even in utter grief, they were restrained. On more than one occasion, the only indication that a mother had found her child was her buckling at the knees and being held up by her husband. There were tears, but the crying was inaudible over the wind and the sound of the digging that continued in the mud and the wreckage of the school and a couple of hundred homes that had made up this village.