Returning to a Nightmare in Japan

Shiho Fukada was born and raised in Tokyo. Now a freelance photographer in Beijing, she began making her way back to Japan, on assignment for The International Herald Tribune, hours after the earthquake. She is traveling with Michael Wines, a writer from the Beijing bureau of The New York Times, and Mac Bishop, a video journalist for The Times. This narrative is an edited version of her conversation with Kerri MacDonald from her hotel room in Kitakami, in northern Iwate Prefecture.