The front cover of Time Out London a few weeks ago showed a mock-up of an ‘apocalyptic’ London storey-deep in Thames floodwater. Lovely helicopter-aerial view, setting sunlight, floodwater as far as the horizon. And then along come early shots of the Tohoku tsunami: same aerial perspective, same angle of light (though this time from fire), same water destruction as far as the eye can see. But this is real, proven by one crucial difference: debris, the thousands of planks, files, cars, photo albums floating on top of the sea, clustering around the remaining structures. The tsunami replaced lives with the tiny objects acquired during them. After the flood, only our junk remains.