Confessions of an accidental foreign correspondent

Perhaps you remember footage of the wave. It was mostly from traffic cameras, mute but darkly mesmerising. Millions of gallons of Pacific seawater upended by a 9.0 earthquake and hurled irresistibly inland. A few days later I saw what that meant, turning a corner in my hire-car to find the road blocked by a trawler that had been washed ashore.

This week, Japan has commemorated the tenth anniversary of the tsunami which killed 15,000 of its people. A seismic tragedy which begat a man-made disaster. Inundated by water, part of the Fukushima nuclear reactor blew up, producing the worst radioactive leak since Chernobyl.

It wasn’t long before scores of foreign journalists flew into Tokyo, with a brief to get to the worst affected areas. I was one of them, unprepared for the after-shocks, but ready for the radiation. I was equipped with a Geiger counter to warn me and my camera team of any invisible dangers.