日本海啸地震一周年

"So, I'm just stepping into this earthquake simulation van and there's a small room here with a table. I'm kneeling down underneath it. There's a small light above me. And I guess we just wait for the earthquake to start…"

This simulation van shows visitors what it's like to experience an earthquake.

Not that many of them need reminding.

The one that hit northeast Japan on March 11, last year was the biggest ever recorded in the country.

Sendai university student Risa was coming home when it struck.

"I got home but electricity and water and gas - we couldn't use. That day was very cold. So we made a fire near the house. That situation lasted for two days."

Thousands like her were in desperate need of help.

Eventually supplies did arrive. And much of this came from charities such as Tokyo-based food-bank Second Harvest.

Head of the charity Charles McJilton was one of the first to deliver aid in the area.

2.56 "The disaster you saw came from the tsunami itself. It was almost as if a giant hand had come over and just swept things away. It was just unimaginable."

McJilton says last year they delivered 16,000 tones of food. But this wasn't always easy.

8.33 "What we found with this is that it's really more important for us, when we're doing that outreach -- we have a national care van traveling throughout Japan telling people about who we are -- is to reach out to the local government units.
 
Because, if the local government's not understanding who you are, they're less likely to work with you when you can provide the aid…"

Up in Sendai, the largest city in the affected area, buildings survived without much damage. A relief to some, maybe. But the bad news is that it's still impossible to know when the next big one will come. Naoshi Hirata is Director of the Earthquake Prediction Research Centre at Tokyo University. He says experts were expecting a quake in Tohoku of up to magnitude 8.

"But in reality it was a magnitude 9 earthquake. The difference is only one but the energy is more than maybe 100 times larger than what we really expected in that area."

Professor Hirata says Japanese earthquake researchers need to work closer with foreign counterparts in order to increase our global understanding of these natural disasters.

For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire in Japan.