A Japanese Coast Guard video taken as the ship crosses several tsunami waves shows just how deceptive these waves can be when riding them out in the ocean. The front of the wave appears as a wall of water. It's frightening to behold on two levels. The first is the visceral sense of fear at seeing such a wall of water approaching.
Watching the ship climb up over that wall, especially the last wave in the video, I found my stomach naturally tensing up. Then I realized I was waiting for the descent that you might expect to follow cresting that big of a wave. But we can tell this isn't any normal ocean swell because that free fall of a ride down the back trough of the wave never comes.
Instead we see that sea level itself has risen up on the other side of the tsunami wave and the ship gently settles into the what is now a new, but very sudden norm. That's where the more frightening of the realizations comes - that this new sea level rise is what was about to wash over the coastline of Japan.
WIDE ANGLE: Crisis in Japan: Latest Coverage
Here is how the waves looked in the port of Oirase Town, Aomori Prefecture, in a video taken from "wngad869," who barely manages to escape at the end:
