I was reading one of the news stories on Yahoo's home page about the earthquake in Japan. It's especially interesting to me because I lived one year in Sendai and another six months in a small suburb called Tagajo. Both were referenced in the article. Sendai had been a city of about 500,000 people when I lived there and Tagajo was maybe 2,000 to 4,000 people. Sendai is now over one million and Tagajo I read somewhere was now actually a small city of about 60,000.

Even more interesting, two of the people I usually have coffee with during the week know the area. One lived in Sendai (left the year we arrived) and the other was in Fukashima (a nearby community) which is where the nuclear plant has been seriously damaged.

Brings the devastation and damage home in a very profound way. Streets I walked on in Tagajo have disappeared and it's hard to imagine a city the size of Sendai facing the damage and struggles they're facing now. In some ways, it maybe even worse than Katrina was to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Needless-to-say, my heart and prayers go out to the people of Japan (especially northeastern Japan) and the grief they are enduring now.