This just came across the TV tonight a few moments ago. 60-year old Hiromitsu Shinkawa was swept away from his home in Minamisoma two days ago and survived floating (9 miles out to sea) on the roof of his house. He is reportedly in "good condition" but I can not image what he endured. Soaking wet and out at sea on the open ocean with temperatures around freezing. He survived two nights! Absolutely amazing! Miraculous. This is one bit of good news of survival on a day that revealed the impact of the quake/tsunami is much worse than feared (I just heard over NHK that one prefecture is now expecting the death toll to be at least 10,000 just for their prefecture).
Took a pic of the screen which shows the man being transferred from the roof of his house to the rescue boat (which belonged to a much larger rescue vessel in the area). This is 15km out to sea and very, very cold. He's very lucky the sea was relatively calm.
TV announcer shows that the man had drifted for two days on his rooftop and was found 15km out to sea. Thank god the rescue team spotted him. Hats off to them .
Some early press on the story:
http://tinyurl.com/4trnaye
