VOA标准英语2012--Karaoke and Counseling: Japan’s Tsunami Survivors Try to Rebuild

（单词翻译）

Karaoke and Counseling: Japan’s Tsunami¹ Survivors² Try to Rebuild

Karaoke is helping³ to heal the wounds of last year’s tsunami. Traditional folk songs are favorite among the residents of Ofunato’s temporary housing, like Kazue Hashiguchi.
She says it is good fun and heals the heart. She says gathering⁴ together in a group and singing and talking to each other is great.
This musical get-together⁵ is taking place on board a purpose-built truck currently touring Japan’s tsunami-hit coast, bringing counseling and karaoke to the bereaved⁶ communities.
Yoshinobu Konno is from the charity ‘Friends of the United Nations,’ which came up with the idea.
He says people who live in these small prefabricated houses lost their families and their homes and are often depressed⁷. He says they are often alone, they do not want to make contact with other people, they become introspective. He says his group is concerned that people could die here alone in their houses. He says his charity is intervening to try to prevent mental illnesses from taking hold.
Dozens of housing blocks have been erected⁸ in Japan in the months following the tsunami. Visiting salesmen bring life’s essentials - and even the odd luxury like locally caught cod⁹ roe¹⁰.
In a small cove¹¹ below Ofunato, there is nothing left of the residents’ original homes. Demolition¹² teams have flattened¹³ the few structures that the tsunami left behind.
Ofunato was one of the worst hit towns when the tsunami roared ashore¹⁴ nearly a year ago.
Further south, a freighter still looms¹⁵ over Kesennuma town, carried several kilometers inland by the tsunami.
It is impossible to forget the horrors of a year ago, but the town is trying to move on.
A mini-village has sprung up to re-house businesses washed away. Chefs and shopkeepers offer a taste of Kesennuma’s once-famed seafood¹⁶.
Among them, Masayoshi Hatakeyama. His traditional Japanese inn was entirely¹⁷ destroyed. His new workplace may be cramped¹⁸, but he says it is a first step on a very long road.
He says the tsunami destroyed a huge area so it will take a long time and hard work to get back to how it was before. He says it will not be like it was before - they will have to create a new town.
Under the direction of a newly-formed Ministry¹⁹ of Reconstruction²⁰, this wrecked²¹ coastline is being transformed with astonishing speed.
Back in Ofunato, survivors say it will take much longer to rebuild their communities; many question whether anyone will want to live here at all.