  Awed in Japan  It is the incomprehensible scale of the tragedy
that silences you. There's the physical scale: A car perched on
the roof of a three-story building in Minami Sanriku, or the
200-ton tug Kazumaru No. 1, swept 1,500 feet inland in the port
of Ofunato, smashing every house in its path to splintered pulp.
The Kazumaru No. 1 tugboat, where the March 11 tsunami left it.
Image courtesy WGBH.  But there's also the scale of the human
tragedy. Rikuzentakata must once have been a stunningly
beautiful coastal town. If you stand in the bay and look up at
the mountains, the view is lovely, the mountains still and
peaceful. But lower your eyes and the scene is of awful
devastation. Where once there was a town of over 20,000, now
there is a blasted mudflat.  I followed a group of perhaps 50
soldiers from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, armed with
bamboo canes, onto the mud. They formed a long line, waiting for
the order, then set off on a careful yard-by-yard search.
Slowly and methodically they advanced,