Well, I wanted to go to northern Japan and voluteer, and I did, and now I find myself with an embarrassment of riches: I have tons of stuff to write about, but no way to get it down on "paper". I lift my hands to the keyboard and put them down again, because it seems futile to try and explain my experiences. I guess the only way to write about complex experiences is ineffectively, little by little.
Above is the Hamayuri, which some of you may have seen on the news. I didn't actually see it- it's long been taken down off the building, because it was unstable, but it does give the idea of the chaos present at the disaster site. One of the voluteer jobs is to dig through all of this rubble and separate out important objects like photos, documents and other valuable items. This requires human hands and judgement, even though considering the scale of the devistation only bulldozers are large enough to make any headway. The ground is like a big fruitcake, with everything in the world mixed together in total randomness: shoes, blankets, rotten fish, cars, rope, power cords, baby bottles, computer mice.
It all sounds completely overwhelming!
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