The Great East Japan Earthquake may have spared Tokyo, but the same can't be said for its next-door neighbor.
The Great East Japan Earthquake may have spared Tokyo, but the same can't be said for its next-door neighbor.
Graced with wide avenues, outsized parks and the presence of Tokyo Disneyland, the western Chiba Prefecture city of Urayasu has always been considered one of the metro area's prime residential suburbs.
In the aftermath of the shaking, it's hard to maintain such optimism, as sand, churned by passing buses, piled into mounds or stuffed into white sandbags, make the city seem a monotone photo of itself.
"It's amazing, isn't it? If you look from a distance, it's as if nothing has happened," says one 25-year-old woman holding a camera near the Ito-Yokado supermarket on Symbol Road leading from Shin-Urayasu Station. "But when you look at something on the ground, you really get a different view," she adds, as she snaps a photo of a convenience store sunk a meter into the ground and surrounded by mounds of what could pass for unmixed cement.
The sand, along with water, oozed up from beneath the sidewalks when the temblor sifted the packed earth under the city into jelly, in a process called liquefaction.
Nearly three-quarters of the city of 164,000 is built on landfill poured into Tokyo Bay starting in the mid-1960s. Before then, Urayasu was a village of fishermen and clam diggers who worked in the nearby tidal flats, according to the Urayasu City Folk Museum. Urayasu became a city in 1981 and welcomed Tokyo Disneyland in 1983.
About 1,455 hectares, or three-quarters of the city, underwent some level of liquefaction, according to the city's urban environment section.
The mud clogged city pipes, cutting off water and sewerage. Rows of temporary toilets have been installed in city parks and squares.
Many roads sank after the severe shaking. The city also reports that at least 1,740 households have applied to the city government for certificates that prove their homes have been left leaning or otherwise affected by the mud phenomenon. If the application is approved, they can receive financial assistance.
"It makes me think about selling my house and moving to somewhere on more solid ground," says one homeowner. "But at this point, it's not a matter of how much of a loss I'm willing to accept. It's a matter of finding someone who'll even think of buying it."