My Japan­ese is pretty ter­ri­ble these days, but I believe that “Hideaki Akaiwa” means “bad­dest moth­er­fucker alive.”

This guy was hav­ing just another day at work when the earth­quake struck Japan, and the sub­se­quent tsunami left his coastal town of Ishi­no­maki cov­ered in a brand-​new ten-​foot-​deep lake. In a real-​life super­hero story, Hideaki chose to take mat­ters into his own hands instead of wait­ing for offi­cial emer­gency response teams to come to town.

He some­how got his hands on some scuba equip­ment, went back to his house, and swam through 200 yards of icy-​cold and debris-​filled waters to res­cue his wife from their flooded house. He then spent the next sev­eral days search­ing for his lost mother, finally reach­ing her after she had been stranded for four days. Even now, Hideaki is search­ing the area for more survivors!

Akaiwa-​sama, you, sir, are the great­est of heroes. I pray for half the courage and pres­ence of mind you dis­played if dis­as­ter were to strike my area. Along these lines, I have signed up for the next series of SF NERT courses. I hope that you all have emer­gency plans as well.