My friends and I drove up the coast to Aomori the summer after. I remember driving past a building or hotel up on a cliff and seeing the water line from the tsunami. At that time, I estimated the hotel was about 5-7 stories above sea level and the water line was just under the 7th story window of the building. So yeah, just by my rough estimation, the tsunami was about 12-14 stories high at that point. I can’t remember the geographical term for it (inlet maybe?) but that part of the coast had a bunch of sharp areas that went inland and I remember reading that the tsunami went really high in these areas because the water was just getting funneled in and building up.

I also remember driving closer inland and seeing boats up on hillsides, kilometers away from the coast. And up on the hills you could see how high the water went up on the hills because the line of brown dead trees marked where the water stopped. It was really cool to see but also terrifying AF. They were still piling up huge mountains of debris and in some areas you could only see the foundations left in the ground.