And yet, 2017 marked the year when the widely-condemned Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) was approved to restart two reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa - the world's biggest power plant. It will be the firm's first return to nuclear power generation since the meltdown, as the company struggles to decommission Fukushima Daiichi. That is expected to take four decades. Understandably, tourists remain sceptical to return. Even domestically, things are hard, as the rest of Japan steer clear of Fukushima-grown produce and meats — a serious blow to a prefecture whose economy is buoyed on agriculture. A small breakthrough came in late February when Thailand became the first country to receive a shipment of fresh fish from Fukushima since March 2011. But as another year ticks over after the disaster, one question for Japan remains: what do we do with these remnants of the disaster that dot the countryside? Preserve or demolish? In Ishinomaki, the Okawa Elementary School where 84 people died, will be preserved. Arahama Elementary School in Sendai - a building which survived the tsunami but which was broadcast across the world with images of people getting evacuated from its roof - has been developed as somewhat of a relic of the disaster and reopened to the public. In Minamisanriku, the future of the mangled wreckage of the former disaster management centre, which issued the last warnings of the impending 16-metre waves and has been left as a makeshift memorial, is unclear. It's at these sites that people will gather at 2.46pm on Sunday. Roadworkers will down tools, shop attendants will form rows, and residents will line broken seawalls and tsunami evacuation areas. And after a minute's silence, they'll get back to rebuilding their community. Life goes on.","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The National","url":"https://www.thenationalnews.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.thenationalnews.com/pf/resources/images/logo_rectangle.png?d=279"}},"articleSection":"Asia","keywords":["World","Japan earthquake","Japan","East Asia","Asia Pacific","Article"],"description":"It may not be the most significant of milestones, but for millions across Japan it's a date hard to forget ","thumbnailUrl":"https://thenational-the-national-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/b07iGBOc4RaRtFdT0okLZvhGP0s=/400x267/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/thenational/ZOFIEKHUOMR5G43S6FIFJK6MTI.jpg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/asia/seven-years-on-how-far-has-japan-come-after-its-earthquake-and-tsunami-1.711944"}}