Japan's Long and Lonely Road

word of the week: accentuate - to give emphasis and prominence to

Japan is best known for being a rather dense country... dense in the sense that there's a large populous in a relatively small area. It is usually quite busy and productive. However, the recent earthquake has set the country back in productivity, destroying parts of the city and cause tsunamis that flooded the country along the coastline. Although the damage in this photo is relatively minor, what portrays is subtly disturbing in what the effects caused were. Even the damage suggests something more to what is possible.

Physically speaking, the bridge in the center of this photo should be completely devastated. Yet, here it is, representing what this earthquake was: something unexpected, stopping everything from miles around. It not only stops it, it's to the point where the damage prevents anything from being done. The road is somehow perfectly divided right down the middle, separating the lanes. The road is left uneven, stopping everything for miles. It more or less accentuates the power of nature and how it can do the seemingly impossible, ranging from ultimate destruction to a simple disruption that comes in the strangest forms. The damage to the bridge is technically minimal, and it's surround seems fine, yet somehow the simple changes in elevation disrupt the entire path that is there and actions that people will take.

Although I do feel a more destructive picture of the damage in Japan would make better sense of what mother nature can do when we don't respect it, I feel it's more important to see what we don't expect, and that we must expect EVERYTHING.