At the Movies

DOMINICBAEZ

LIFESTYLESSUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2011 1C

KESENNUMA, Japan — Japan’scoast guard has rescued a dog driftingon a rooftop off the country’s coast,threeweeksafter a tsunami ravaged thenortheast.It was unclear how long the dog had

been at sea when a helicopter crewspotted it Friday more than a mile offthe town of Kesennuma.

It took several hours to capture thedog because it scampered across otherfloating wreckage when it saw officerswinching down from the chopper.Officials said Saturday that the dog’s

blackish collar gives no clues about itsowner. After the rescue, the dog keptquiet and ate biscuits and sausages ona patrol boat.

By TIM SULLIVANThe Associated Press

KESENNUMA, Japan — When hewas younger, the carpenter picked aspot just off the Shikaori River andbuilt his house. ToshioOnodera chis-eled the joints for the wooden roofbeams and cemented the tiles ontothe front porch. He mounted ivory-colored siding on the outside walls.Hisparentsmoved inwithhim, and

so did his mother’s mother. He is theoldest son, and that is what traditiondictates here. He lived in the housefornearly 30 years. Then suddenly, onMarch 11, itwasnomore—destroyedby the tsunami, a three-story wall of

black water that followed the courseof the river andall but obliteratedhisneighborhood.Now he sleeps on the floor of a

crowded junior high school gymnasi-um,next tohis 83-year-oldmotherandalongside hundreds of neighbors,nearly all of them long past retire-ment. It’s a community livingbeneathbasketball hoops, adrift on a sea ofacrylic blankets.At 57, Onodera is one of the gym’s

youngest residents. If he insists Ke-sennuma will emerge from thewreckage of the tsunami, he alsoknows it faces an immense demo-graphic challenge.“This is a town of old people,” he

says ashe stands on the foundationofhis house on a cold winter morning,the smashed remains of someoneelse’s roof on the ground next to him.“Young people just don’t want to livein Kesennuma anymore.”Thebeamshehadchiseledwere 75

feet away, tangled with wreckagefrom across the neighborhood. Theair stank of mold and mud and fuelthat had leaked from the nearbyport. He pointed to the remnants ofhouseafterhousewhere the residentsare either dead or missing.“No one will come back here,” he

predicts of his old neighborhood,

By TODD PITMANThe Associated Press

MINAMISANRIKU, Japan — The onlything left ofMinamisanrikuCityHall is itstwo front steps.Nearby, a pink octopus lies dead in a

pool of sea water, its tentacles wrappedaround a crumpled sheet of corrugatedaluminum that may have been a roof, agate, a wall. Beside it, a broken tarmacroad runs as far as the eye can see throughfields of demolished houses and debris.Aspost-tsunami Japan turns to theenor-

mous task of putting towns like this backtogether again, the sheer extent of thedev-astation wrought March 11 raisesexistential questions: Should thedozensofshattered communities along these shoresbe rebuilt at all? Can they be, when up tohalf their inhabitants are gone and sur-vivors know it could happen again?“The future is not bright,” Jin Sato, the

56-year-old mayor of Minamisanriku, saysmatter-of-factly.The statistics for this town alone are

grim. Of the 17,666 people who once livedhere, at least 322 have been confirmeddead and thousands more have disap-peared — still buried in the ruins orsucked out to sea. Another 9,325 lost theirhomes and live in 45 shelters, mostlyschools, spread on hills along the bay.The tsunami swept away nearly every

business, every job. There is no electrici-ty or running water, and very little fuel.Some 70 percent of Minamisanriku’s 5,574houses were destroyed.Inside a hilltop sports arena that serves

as shelter, morgue and makeshift office,

Sato sits red-eyed behind a small desk.“Whateverhappens,” he says, “we’re goingto need a lot of help.”

�Minamisanriku has long been a small

blue-collar fishing town, a place wherehardy residents in rubberboots fished thechilly sea, farmed seaweed and sold octo-pus and oysters.Acollectionof villages liningcovesalong

a C-shaped bay, it was scenic and peace-ful. The website for the Hotel Kanyo —damaged but still standing — shows visi-tors dipping in hot springs and snappingpictures of seagulls from balconies over-looking the Pacific Ocean.On March 11, two days after an earth-

quake shookbuildings fromhere toTokyobut caused no major damage, Sato wastalking to staff at City Hall about the needto boost disaster preparedness. As hespoke, one of the strongest quakes everrecorded rocked the Japanese archipela-go at 2:46 p.m., triggering tsunami sirensthat began howling across town.People hurried to designated hilltop

refuges, and Sato scrambled atop a gov-ernment disaster readiness center nextdoor.Half anhour later, hewatched inaweas the thunderous wave surged over a seawall in the harbor, kicking up plumes ofmist and dust.Horrified onlookers screamed in terror

as the churning water swallowed Mi-namisanriku’s main district, Shizugawa.Entire houses made of wood swirled atopthedark, debris-filledwave—avast, dead-ly froth filled with shorn power pylons,

AP photo by David GuttenfelderIn this photo taken Wednesday, March 23, 2011, the Minamisanriku Disaster Emergency Center headquarters stands gutted in the earthquake- and tsunami-destroyedtown of Minamisanriku, northeastern Japan. The headquarters, which sounded the tsunami alert signal March 11, was later totally submerged under the incomingwave. The town's mayor, Jin Sato, spent the night on the roof clutching to a fence on its edge.

AP photo by Japan Coast GuardIn this Friday photo released by the Japan Coast Guard, members of theJapan Coast Guard rescue a dog after it was found drifting on the roof of ahouse floating off Kesennuma, northeastern Japan.

Tsunami stories

Post-tsunami town wonders if to rebuild

See TOWN/3C

AP photo by David GuttenfelderA flooded and debris-lined street in the tsunamiravaged city of Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture onSunday local time.

Japan’s tsunami coast contemplates the future

MMOOVVIIEE RREEVVIIEEWW

AP photo by Film DistrictPatrick Wilson, left, and Rose Byrne are shown in a scenefrom “Insidious.”

‘Insidious’ scaresyou senseless until movie’s end

Suspense, that slow, ag-onizing build up, oftenproves more frighten-ing than the actual act

that’s supposed to scare us.It’s the sense of the unknown,while being acutely aware

that something wicked thisway comes. You hold yourbreath because it’s obvioussome slithering nightmare islurking around the corner,eagerly waiting to pounce.

However, this suspensefulbuild-up can set you up for amighty fall, and you can beleft feeling the crescendowasn’t worth the wait. Andthat’s no truer than with Hol-lywood’s newest horror flick,“Insidious.” While equalmeasures scintillating andenigmatic for the first two-thirds of the movie,

If possession is nine-tenths of the law...

See INSIDIOUS/3C

See COAST/3C

Japan’s coast guard rescues dog from floating roof

“Insidious”

�������

Sunday, April 3, 2011 East Oregonian Page 3CLIFESTYLES

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Runs April 19 & 23 in the East Oregonian and April 23

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boats and even trains.Sato clung precariously to a steel railing on the disas-

ter center’s rooftop as ice cold waves washed repeatedlyover it.About 30peoplehad fled to the roofwithhim; some20 were swept away.Satoand theother survivors spent a shiveringnight atop

the three-story building, which had been reduced to askeleton of itself, its walls torn completely off. The nextday, he climbed down to the ground on a chaotic tangleof fishing nets that the tsunami had deposited over thebuilding.Most of the town was simply gone.

�Two weeks later, Reiko Inaba was walking through ru-

ins when she stumbled on two yellow crates filled withmuddy photo albums, placed at the edge of a mountainof rubbleby Japanese soldiers separating valuables fromdebris.Therewerepictures of newbornbabies, of school class-

es and laughing children. There were wedding photoscovered in dirt and grime. Were they alive? Dead?She didn’t know.Halfway through the crate, one photo caught Inaba’s

eyes.The 35-year-old retirement homeworkerbrushedaway

the dirt covering it with a whitemitten andwas astound-ed by what she saw: a picture of her now 13-year-old son,Rukya, staring back at her.Here, a mile from the spot on which her home once

stood, bypure chanceorpersistence, shehadcomeacrossfour snapshots taken 10 years earlier. Two showedRukyastanding over a white birthday cake when he was three.The boy survived with the rest of the family.“I had given up finding any of this,” Inaba said, clutch-

ing thewater-ruinedphotos close to her breast. “Wehavenothing else left.”Nothing, she said, equals this: one white kitten piggy

bankwith 500 yen ($6) inside it, a fewbank statements, andthe clothes on her back.Other lives will never be put back together again.At the entrance of the sports arenawhere themayor is

struggling to run the town, 60-year-old Sachiko Sato stud-ied a list of names posted on a glass wall inside the door.No. 104 was unknown, identified by his height, his

weight and a black mole on his right shoulder.No. 49 was identified but unclaimed: Kazuo Izawa.Of her husband, Sakae, there was no sign.Sato last saw him the day the tsunami struck. He had

left home in a brown suit headed for the town council,where he worked. It was the final meeting of a session,and “he told me, ‘After it’s over, let’s meet for a drink,’”Sato recalled. “I told him, OK. I’ll see you later.”Her husband was the pillar of the family andmade all

the decisions, she said. “Without him,” she added quiet-ly, staring at the list, “I have no idea what we’ll do.”On a hilltop across town, Reiko Sato stood in her door-

way, looking down overMinamisanriku. She is one of thelucky ones: She lost no family, and her home was un-touched. But just a few feet (meters) from her doorstep,the tsunami’s legacy begins.Every day, she wakes up to the sound of military bull-

dozers reorganizingdebris into separatemounds: piles ofwood tobeburned,piles of scrapmetal tobehauledaway.The four-storyhospitalwhere sheworkedasanurse is oneof the few buildings left standing, but she wonders if itwill ever reopen.With no stores stocked, she must line up at a nearby

school-turned-shelter to get rations ofmiso soupand riceballs. She gathers water for her family in plastic jugs.“You cannot look at this and feel lucky,” she said. Her

daughter pointed a tiny index finger repeatedly towardsomething rarely seen here before: a military helicoptercircling the sky.

�Fordecades, Japan’s youthhave abandoned towns like

this in favor of the urban bustle of glittering cities likeTokyo. In Minamisanriku, the population has remainedmore or less the same for the last half century.Many younger people moved away long ago, said

Toshiko Suda, 63, who ran a business selling seaweed.“Now their parents may follow.”Suda’s children live in thenearest big city, Sendai, parts

of which were also heavily damaged. She put her life in-to the business she startedwith her husband, 64-year-oldMichio.Now, the fishermen who brought them seaweed are

missing, and theboats that once lined theharboraregone.So is their house, their business and the fish shops acrossthe street.“Wedon’twant to leave,” Suda said. “But if nobodyelse

comesback,we can’t stay.You cannot build a life by your-self.”Elsewhere in the ruins, construction worker Kazuhiro

Watanabe stood over the foundation of his home, tryingto figure out where the things in it may have been sweptto. Nobody will live in any part of Minamisanrikutouched by the tsunami, he said.“Maybe everyone will just move to the hills — if they

stay here at all,” he added. But the town is still in shock,still mourning: “This is not the time to think about re-building.”And first, some crucial questions must be answered:

Should the entire town shift inland, high on thehills, safefrom thewaves? Is it humanly possible to protect againstsuch a mighty force of nature?Manyhere still remember the last tsunami thatwrecked

the town in 1960. Propelled across the oceanby amassivequake off Chile, that wave arrived at a height of nearly 8feet (2.4 meters) and killed more than 40 people. The dis-asterprompted the towntostageannual tsunamidrillsandbuilda thick, one-story-highconcrete seawall,whichSatosays contributed to a false sense of security.

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TOWN: ‘This is not the time tothink about rebuilding’ the town

COAST: ‘... younger generation sees no future in places like this’

INSIDIOUS: Good acting only goes so far when script goes bad“Insidious” falls completely flat inthe last act, leaving you flummoxedand a little disappointed.“Insidious,” a “Poltergeist”-style

remake by James Wan (“Saw”movies), opens with the Lambertfamily moving into their new home.Father Josh (Patrick Wilson, “HardCandy”) and mother Renai (RoseByrne, “28 Weeks Later”), alongwith their two young sons and in-fant daughter, are acclimating totheir new, beautiful, older homewhen odd occurrences start hap-pening. At first, it goesunchallenged, but when a son, Dal-ton (Ty Simpkins), falls into amysterious coma-like state, themagnitude of the situation becomesapparent. The family soon vacatesthe home, believing it to be haunt-ed. But their troubles just hopalong for the ride. This realizationleads to another epiphany: It’s notthe house that was haunted, it’sDalton. Explanations and other-worldly adventures follow asDalton’s parents fight to save theirson from a demonic entity, sum-moning priests, psychics and two

sad meshuggeners trying to beghostbusters to aid them in theirincreasingly hopeless endeavor.And while you may be hooked

into the storyline at first, it doesn’tstay that way for long. The directorskillfully merges suspense, horrorand action to create an almost pal-pable sense of foreboding thatblankets you. But somewhere alongthe way, the creativity and intelli-gence that permeated the movieseem to get possessed themselves,fall off the deep end and becomeancillary to the whims of the mod-ern horror genre.This deterioration quickly unrav-

els all the work the director, writerLeigh Whannell (“Saw” movies)and main actors had put into themajority of the movie. And theredefinitely was some good work go-ing on there. Wilson and Byrne aregreat in their roles as embattledparents trying to save their son,and Whannell goes a long way inredeeming his mantra of “blood +guts = horror” by showing that alack of gore can be scarier than ablood-drenched scene. And whilethe music was a bit overwhelmingat times, it often proved to be the

scariest part of the scene.But no matter how terrified you

are, it’s hard not to be bored whenthe action refocuses to a sit-downdiscussion in the living room withwords like “astral projection” and“readings” being thrown around.But it gets worse, especially whendemons start materializing in fullform. It’s a shame rivaling the ap-pearance of little green men in“Signs.”All in all, “Insidious” goes a long

way in living up to its name, but itsadly falls short at the worst possi-ble time. Whatever happenedduring production, it’s obvious anysort of truncating, better writing ortighter editing would have gone along way. That’s not to say “Insidi-ous” isn’t creepy. It is. But it’s hardto take anything serious when themain antagonist is called the Lip-stick-Face Demon.Three stars out of five.

�Dominic Baez is the copy

editor/paginator for the East Oregon-ian. Follow his movie blog, SilverScreening, for the latest trailers, clipsand extras at silverscreening.word-press.com.

Continued From 1C

saying hewill stay in town butmovefurther inland.Japan is starting to confront years

of post-tsunami reconstructionalongits northeastern coast, grapplingwith an estimated 18,000 peopledead, hundreds of thousands lefthomeless, entire villages destroyedand a nuclear crisis 80 miles (130kilometers) south of here that couldstill turn catastrophic.For the townsand farming villages — places likeKesennuma that havebeenbatteredfor decadesby economicdecline, anexodus of young people and a rap-idly aging population — thechallenge could prove impossible.“The prospects for the future are

pretty grim for these communities,because of the high percentage ofagedpeople,” says JeffKingston, di-rector of Asian studies at TempleUniversity’s Tokyo campus.Elsewhere in Japan, people from

this part of the country have longbeen known as “gaman zuyoi” —roughly, “toughpeople.”Thewintersare brutally cold, especially alongthe coast. The soil is rocky and hardto farm. Famines were once com-monplace. Such an environmentbred resilience, tight-knit commu-nities and a fierce attachment totraditional family life among thepeople who remained.Now, thousands of those families

have been shattered. Multigenera-tional homes have been destroyed.Traditional family support networkshave been ripped apart.“Inplaces like this, oldpeople are

supposed to raise grandchildrenand drink tea. And suddenly that’sall gone,” saysKingston. “Wherearethey going to get the mental andphysical resources to come back?”Japan’s population is among the

world’s most rapidly aging. Birthrates are plunging as young Japan-

esewait to getmarriedandhave few-er children. Life spans areincreasing.Thenumbersare stark: peopleage

65andolderaccount fora record23.2percent of the population in 2011,compared to 12.9percent in theUnit-ed States in 2009.The demographic challenge that

has created, affecting everythingfrom pension plans to national pol-itics, ismagnified intenselyalong thetsunami-savagednortheastern coast.As Japan rapidly became a mod-

erneconomicpowerafterWorldWarII, life around here lost its appeal.Generations of parents watched astheir children fled small-town life,abandoning farms and fishing boatsto find office jobs in big cities.Then, as Japan’s overall economy

began sagging in the 1990s, towns-people watched again as fishprocessing factories — long a re-gional manufacturing mainstay —started laying offworkers or closing.More young people left.The result is places like Kesen-

numa, a town of about 73,000 with asmallport anddown-at-theheelshot-spring resorts. Officials say about 30percent of the population is olderthan 65.“The younger generation sees no

future in places like this,” saysShinichiro Yoshida, 36, a managerfor one of the city’s nursing homes.Yoshida, an earnest man in glassesand a white face mask, has beenworking to exhaustion since thetsunami tore through the nursingcomplex, killing 45 of the 136 resi-dents.After getting survivors to the gym-

nasium-shelter, he has beenstruggling to find places where theycan stay for the coming months.“We’re taking themall over the area— anywhere we can find for themwith electricity and with water, andwhere we can get transportation to

move them there,” he says.Despite what happened to them,

he says they haven’t discussed thetsunami. Inmanyways that’s not sur-prising. Japanese ideals of stoicismand reserve are magnified amongthe country’s elderly, andevenmoreamong the gaman zuyoi. Publicly re-flecting on pain just isn’t done, andYoshida says the nursing-home res-idents have made that clear.“Theydon’t talk about it,” he says,

“and we don’t ask about it.”Yoshida saysmost of his peers left

Kesennumayearsago forSendai, theclosest large city, or Tokyo. Now itwill be even harder for his home-town to hold onto its young people,as the destruction drives away evenmore businesses.The carpenter’s mother doesn’t

even want to think about that.Tamiko Onodera spent her life in

Kesennuma. She worked in a fishprocessing factory, andherhusbandwas a construction worker until hedied a few years ago. They earnedenough to buy a couple of plots ofland in the town.Now, a tiny space has become her

world — the two straw mattresseswhere she and her son sleep, thefour folding chairs set upat oneend,stacked with a few handfuls of do-nated goods. She sits among theseitems and says she is terrified ofeven going back to the destroyedhome.She andher son left the house im-

mediately after the massive9.0-magnitude earthquake thatcaused the tsunami. They droveawaywith thewave’s strange, hissingroar just a few hundred yards (me-ters) behind them.“I don’t want to move,” she says,

her tiny eyes almost hidden amid aface filled with wrinkles. “This hasalways been where I lived. ... But Ihaven’t decided anything. I don’tknow if we’ll rebuild.”

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