Donations will be made for each person who runs a search for information about the tragedy, with funds helping farmers, students, and those suffering from depression and loneliness.
The coronavirus outbreak remains at the forefront of people’s minds in Japan, but today the country is also taking a moment to look back and reflect on another crisis it faced in the past. It’s been nine years since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan’s northeastern Tohoku region, and while the effects of the paired disasters may no longer have a daily effect on most people’s lives, for those who live, or lived, in the stricken communities, things will never again be quite the same.
Yahoo! Japan annually encourages people to remember the tragedy that befell Tohoku by running a search for “3.11” and once again this year the company will be donating 10 yen (US$0.10) per person who does so on March 11 (Japan time).
The funds will be distributed to six organizations working towards the recovery of the Tohoku region and the well-being of its people. Individual causes include helping farmers forced to evacuate their fields in Fukushima Prefecture due to radiation concerns find new jobs in the agricultural sector, educational programs and infrastructure development for displaced students, mental health and emotional counseling for those dealing with the grief of losing their home or a loved one, and even a project to plant sakura cherry blossom trees in a section of Iwate Prefecture where he landscape was left barren after the tsunami’s waters receded.
With the donation program being run by the Japanese division of Yahoo!, naturally the search results will be for Japanese-language websites. Even if you can’t read Japanese, though, a quick click on 画像 (images) or 動画 (videos) at the top of the results page for your 3.11 search will bring up powerful reminders of what Tohoku went through, how fragile life really is, and how thankful we should all be for what we have.
Yahoo! Japan’s search box can be found here.
Top image: Yahoo! Japan
Insert images: Yahoo! Japan (1, 2, 3)
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