I'm not alone in finding Japanese museums about earthquakes and tsunamis interesting and impactful; I know my friend Catherine who travelled with me in Tohoku last month is the same. This episode will test out whether it's just the two of us, or if more of you share this feeling - a yearning to understand more about these kinds of disasters, to get to know more about the human stories behind them, and a keen desire to share in the "hope tourism" equation of the scenario.

In this episode, I talk about three parts of my recent trip to Japan that fit under this idea of "hope tourism" - and not "dark tourism". As well as visiting the "Kaze no Denwa", we spent many hours at two new museums in northern Japan: the Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum in Rikuzentakata, Iwate, and the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum in Futaba, Fukushima. We both found these visits so impactful, and I'm still mulling over a lot of what I saw and learnt there to this day.

Links:

• “Really Long Distance” - This American Life episode about the Wind Phone - https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go-2016/act-one 


• Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum - https://iwate-tsunami-memorial.jp/en/visit.html


• The Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum - https://www.fipo.or.jp/lore/en 


• Hope Tourism - https://www.hopetourism.jp/en/ 


• Walk Japan - our hike - Episode 308 - https://notaballerina.com/308 


• Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers


• Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://notaballerina.com/linkedin


• Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/310

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