Japan makes fast strides in repairing road

[CathyA]

According to the news last night, the huge break in that highway that they've shown often after the earthquake, was totally repaired in 3 days. Remember seeing that huge long split down the middle of the highway, where one side was many feet below the other? They showed the repaired road and it was totally normal again. The newscaster said "Think of that when you can't even get your potholes repaired."
Amazing work.

[Gina]

I've seen similar photos and claims at another site of this story. Alas the two views of the highway - the before and after of the damage, and then the 'repair' - were not of the same vantage point nor section of the road. I'm sure they've made great progress, but I'll withhold judgement on the 3 day fix until I see photos that are comparable.

[sweetana3]

I am just impressed by the clean "roads" they made in the piles of broken houses and boats etc. so they could at least move around. The NYT had a fantastic article about how a community immediately got together, organized, and sorted out their needs while in an evacuation shelter. Imagine spotless toilets, organized cooking teams, leadership groups, etc. In fact, the government is now rethinking how to sort temp. housing to accomodate these organized community groups rather than dispersing them.

It is so different from other disasters where the hands are out waiting and complaining for the government to fix the immediate problem.

[JaneV2.0]

There were some small pockets of neighborhood action after Katrina, too: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/72/beyond-sustainability/

It seems to boil down to resilience vs. learned helplessness.

[CathyA]

I've been trying to understand what the difference is. seems like a huge difference though.

[madgeylou]

I've been trying to understand what the difference is. seems like a huge difference though.

at least some of it is cultural. japanese culture is much more communally-minded than US culture (in general).