Cooking!

In the beginning, I came to Tono ready to help people dig out their houses. I expected to be raking mud, hauling rubbish in wheelbarrows, and hosing off family photos. I never really expected to spend my time cooking. However, due to my schedule, I've ended up mainly doing cooking. The problem is that the clean-up crew gets on the busses for work at 7:45 in the morning. No matter how much a rush, I am at the mercy of the train schedule and cannot get to Tono on Friday before 8:00. That puts me in the 8:30 "Wakachiai Squad," or the "Sharing Squad." (Sharing basically means cooking for people at the shelters.)

To me, cooking is purgatory. I'm not horrible at American cooking-- I'm acceptable. But I am horrible at Japanese cooking. Not only do I not know the recipies, I don't even know how to follow directions. Sometimes, I don't even know what the ingrediants look like! So, although I do my best to follow directions and do manage to chop things acceptably, I end up spending a lot of time hanging around. Since the squad has seven volunteers cooking for about 30 people, there tends to be free time for everyone. Volunteers hang around empty-handed, and when a simple job comes up like dish washing or vegetable chopping, everyone pounces.

Naturally, the first ones to notice the fact that there were spare hands in the kitchen were the children at the shelter. Specifically, three elementary age girls. They soon appeared, peeking through the sliding door into the kitchen and clamoring for "Big Brother," the handsome 20-something volunteer, to play for them. As I was low on the totem-pole in the kitchen, I was also conscripted.

First, we had to play tag. When the adults became sweaty and balked at continuing the game of tag, the three girls agreed to change the game. . .to guess what. . .Cops and Robbers, which is basically a different kind of tag!

This left the adults (including me, first and foremost) in a fix. On one hand, we were there to help out residents as much as, and in any way, possible. And yet, adults are well known for their stubborn resistance to playing running games. To give us credit, the adults rose to the challenge and played an impressive number of turns of Cops and Robbers. Later, I was successful in getting Koharu, the most outgoing girl, to do some sketching with me instead!

There is no picture of Koharu and friends yet--but Mr. Kanamori did get them to pose, and he promises to send me a copy of the photo.