Outtakes 1

Our Trip is Drawing to an End

Well, our trip was drawing to an end, and so is yours, Dear Reader. If you are a Loyal Follower, you have read your way through my May volunteer experiences in Tono, then held your breath waiting for more during my long hiatus, then been overjoyed to read my new posts in August. If there are actually such people out there, thank-you for your time! If not, thanks for glancing at my Blog once in a while!

Just because I have returned to the States doesn't mean I'm "done" with northeastern Japan. If anything, the more I travel there, the more my interests seem to zero in on that region. The more I read about it and travel through it, the more it takes shape in my mind.

That being said, my ideas for continuing to support the Sanriku Coast region are still vague. For now, the only concrete idea I have is to do a project supporting Takkon Daycare, so I'll start with that. I'm also thinking of doing some art inspired by my experiences, and having a show to raise money for the region.

As for conclusions about volunteering, I've learned a lot, but like most learning experiences, it just raises more questions.

Hmmm. I keep writing paragraphs hoping that the next paragraph will do a great job of summing up my Blog, but I'm not hitting the jackpot. Since this is a Blog, not a novel, I guess I don't have to worry about how good the ending is.

This is it for my official account, but stand by for a few outtakes!

Takkon Daycare

So Ben and I went to Takkon Daycare with several other volunteers (including the young woman pictured in the previous post, (who I now recall called herself "Chonmage" because she had a samurai-like ponytail). We did a very simple project of passing out paper and crayons for the kids to draw pictures. They got to keep the crayons. Ben was the object of much admiration among the little kids-- I don't think he quite knew what to do with all of the attention. As we left, I asked the principal for her business card. I have a vague idea of building some kind of relationship with that daycare. Maybe Northfield Daycare could send drawing. . .anyway, I'm still thinking about it. Any ideas?

It was an enjoyable, but exhausting, day. I have much respect for professionals who deal with little kids all day long!

Sidestop

The charming young woman pictured with Ben (I lost her name) accompanied us to Takkon Daycare in Ofunato, where we did a project with some kids. We arrived in the town early, though, so she suggested we go and see Goishi Beach on Matsuzaki Penninsula. It's called Goishi Beach because the pebbles are especially round and look like Japanese Go (a board game) pieces. She was worried that Goishi Beach might have been struck by the tsunami, but we found it largely unscathed. The rocks were just like she said, smooth and beautiful. Funny, in the areas with no human habitation the tsunami just came and went, leaving little trace.

A Woman's Worn Back

I already mentioned that Ben and I spent a day visiting temporary housing, where our job was to communicate with the residents, assess their needs, and perform "tapping touch," a kind of massage. We set out with a team of five-- looking back, this job could have been done well by two people, but one of the principles of volunteerism is to be a "tool" doing tasks determined by other people. (Although at Tono Magokoro, where there is lots of turnover, another principle is that as soon as you are ready (or before), you should move into a position of decision making and responsiblity.)

Most memorable was our visit to an elderly woman living in a small temporary house. We waited for her for about twenty minutes before she arrived. She'd gone out on a short errand, but I could immediately see why it took so long: like many hard-working women her age, her body was bent into the shape of an "L" roated 90 degrees to the right, so she must always walk staring at the ground. It looks intensely uncomfortable, but one must become accustomed to it.

The woman sat on her small bed while one of the female volunteers asked her questions. I was chosen to climb up behind her on the bed and do the "tapping touch" massage. I had been instructed carefully about how to think about my relationship to the person receiving the massage. I was to think of myself as having the honor of giving her a massage, not as a "giver" performing a service. At the time I received the explanation, I thought, "Really. How new-wave." But as I looked at the woman's small, rounded back, I suddenly understood what they were talking about. I thought about how years and years of labor, probably in a fishing family, had slowly pushed this back into position, about the inoxerable process that had rounded it into the tiny shape in front of me. In comparison to this woman, had I ever experienced the weight of the world, or struggled against the forces that mercilessly crush us into an aged shape? What nerve I had, raising my pampered hands incapable of any useful labor and intending to give some kind of comfort to her weathered back! I hesitated with my hands raised, overwhelmed by my own uselessness. But of course, there was no going back. The other volunteers watched me expectantly. So I rubbed my hands together to warm them up (the first step is to simply warm the person's back), then I cupped her shoulders in my hands and began.

The Value of Someone Else's Photographs

One day, Ben and I opted for photograph duty. Photograph duty is divided into two parts, washing/drying and scanning. Boxes of photographs, found in the wreckage, arrive at the Center. A team then washes them gently in water, attempting to separate those that are stuck together, and hangs them up to dry like a row of laundry on a line. Some people say this labor is almost as hard as rubble removal, because you have to lean forward over the washtubs in an awkward position. Dried photographs are taken to the gym, where there are two laptops with attached scanners. Ben and I helped to scan the photographs into folders. I was impressed with the thoroughness of the volunteers- any photo with even a trace of an image had been saved. I remember one in particular, a photo of a houseplant that had gone completely yellow. Only faint white marks showed where the plant was in the photo. I wanted to throw it away, but since another volunteer had already washed it and decided to keep it, I scanned it instead. How can one know the value of someone else's photograph? Maybe it was the beloved houseplant of a little old woman who lived alone. Maybe it was a birthday gift from a son to his mother- the mother survived and the son perished- all other photos of her son were destroyed, and only the plant is left. Maybe. . . while pondering the significance of the partially ruined photographs, I kept sorting them and handing them to Ben, who worked the scanner.

I once read an article by a foreigner who saw a Japanese woman cleaning the gutter with chopsticks. He was amazed she would be so thorough even in cleaning the street. Is it only in Japan that a volunteer would save a picture of some white smudges on yellow, scan it, label it, and put it in a photo album? Or is this part of the ethics of being a volunteer, not to make any judgements on value?

The Island and the Tsunami

I liked this doodle Ben wrote in my notebook (I colored it later). We traveled around the edge of one particular bay where, according to one of the volunteers, "The damage would have been even worse, except that the island took the brunt of the tsunami." Always amidst disaster, there are cases of hope like the island, where one feels (or wants to feel) divine intervention. Will noticed that among the wreckage, somehow shrine gates seemed to be mysteriously spared!

On the other hand, when I visited Wano Kaikan, a small refugee center, and expressed an interest in the rumored "god of the mountain," a man gave me a wry grin.
"Kikanai kamisama desu yo." (That god doesn't listen.) In view of the mess just a few hundred yards down the mountain, I can certainly understand this view, as well.

A Rare Bit of Coast

My first volunteer activity with Ben was to head to a village of temporary houses to talk with survivors, assess their needs, and perform "tapping touch," a kind of massage. I'll have more to say about this later, but for lunch we (a group of five) drove up the mountain to this picnic area. High on the side of the hill, the picnic area looks down into a small bay with brilliant blue water. Because there are no buildings along the bay, and probably because of the steep cliffs, from this particular viewpoint we could see no tsunami damage-- a little glimpse of the marine paradise this coast was before the tsunami, and a preview of the beauty that will come again.

The Gutter, Part II

Ben and I got tired after the first day, but Will liked The Gutter and opted to continue for another four days. During that time, he got to know "my guy," (from my previous blog) and the guy pictured in the photograph, Mr. Ban. Mr. Ban was good at English, and good-humoredly translated for the three gaijin (foreigners) on the team.

One reason Will liked gutter work was that the filthy water was nice and cool. Afternoons were baking hot, and the humidity was always high, so even chemical-filled water was a draw. At least the day I was there, Will spent most of his breaks standing in the water. "My guy" went to the length of stripping down to his shorts and washing both his body and his clothes in the water (although the foreman recommended against this). The first time he did this, he didn't have a dry towel, so I leant him one of ours. He was remarkably grateful and assured us that he would give us a new towel the next day-- which he did. He also gave us a fan. I should have been used to such good manners after twenty years of present-getting, but I was amazed that even the gift of a simple wash towel required a formal counter(measure). How can I be useful as a volunteer, when no matter what I do someone else does more for me?

Red Dragonfly: Reprise

Our first day of work involved taking a bus to Hakozaki, in Kamaishi City, a city hard-hit by the tsunami. The damage is so complete that there's really no place to start- like one of those fairy-tales where the heroine must drain a lake with a sieve, or find a needle in a barn full of straw. However, there is an order to clearing wreckage: first, the most hazardous materials are removed and roads are opened. That had already been achieved. Next, utilities are restored. Our task was to clear debris out of a large rain gutter with shovels and wheelbarrows. And when I say debris, I mean BIG debris such as chunks of asphalt, rocks and shovelsful of heavy sand. The team of about 15 people included a Stanford graduate (Japanese), a couple of young men from California, a Mongolian boxer, a large number of tough-looking Japanese workmen, and, of course, us. We were given either a shovel or a "neko" ("cat," the Japanese slang for wheelbarrow) and got to work under the fairly hot sun.

Will, of course, was a natural. He jumped into a gutter, immediately up to his calves in polluted water, and got to work. The foreman took one look at Ben and I, and gave us wheelbarrows instead of shovels. Ben started in and did a great job hauling. Meanwhile, I assisted the tough, wirey worker featured in the photograph, who later became friends with Will. Some of the gutter was covered with concrete lids which didn't come off, and my guy decided to crawl under the lids and clear out some of the garbage.

"Sing to me," he said.
"Sing??"
"Yes, you must inspire me. Sing so that I can hear your voice and have a goal!"
With that, he dived into the gutter.
Well, he had asked the wrong person. Embarrassingly enough, what I wrote in a previous blog is actually true: the only song I can sing all the way through is the Japanese folksong Red Dragonfly.
"Sing! Sing!" came a dim, echoey voice from down in the gutter.
"Okay," I said weakly, and started in. I thought I heard a muffled, "Huh?" from under the concrete.
With vague hopes that "Red Dragonfly" would again produce tears of emotion in my audience, I dutifully sang all four verses. Then, out of songs, I gave a rendition of the only other songs I know even a bit, James Cagney's "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "We are Marching to Pretoria (both courtesy of my grandmother, who lived through World War I).

A time later, my hero backed out of the gutter shaking his head. "Too much gravel," he said. "Can't get through."

"It's my fault," I said. "I didn't inspire you."
He shook his head. "No, very good." He grinned. "Can't believe you decided to sing a Japanese song. . ." He added hopefully, "Maybe next time Madonna or American Pops?"

Boots

Boots
The first problem was boots. Although I had made sure Will brought his own boots (size 14, all rubber, with metal inserts to protect against nails), I had been counting on picking up two pairs of boots for myself and Ben at the Center. I had some reason to expect that boots would be available, because when I’d last visited a month before they had lots of spares. To my dismay, the system had changed completely in the month I’d been away. Now the extra boots were quarantined on a ledge to the left of the entranceway with a sign proclaiming “Don’t take these!” Hiding my indignation, I approached a businesslike man at the front desk and asked about the situation.
He smiled wryly. “Yes, it was the case that you could pick up the excess gloves, masks and boots that people left behind. But then volunteers started counting on things being available. People came from all over Japan expecting boots and gloves to be provided. So we had to change the system. After all, one of the principles of volunteering is to be self-sufficient. We now expect you to bring your own boots.”
I nodded understandingly. I did not want to be confused with those freeloaders who expected everything to be laid out before them! Reluctantly, I walked away (not without a furtive glance at the rows of boots and a furtive calculation about the possibility of swiping a pair after dusk).
I was stumped. After having bottomed out my budget just getting to Tono, it looked like Ben and I would not be able to work in the disaster area the next day, and I didn’t want to send Will alone. Reluctantly, I decided to ask Mr. Koiguchi for yet more good will. Using a cell phone he had provided, I called and asked if he had any spare boots I could borrow (stink up/puncture/ruin). As he had before, he immediately came through for us. In just 20 minutes he pulled up to the Center with two pair of very nice rubber boots. As I brought the boots in through the entrance, I made sure to signal to the man behind the desk. “I didn’t take these from out front- a friend gave them to me.” I held up the boots.
He nodded. “Do you have inserts?” he asked.
My face fell. I had overlooked the fact that Mr. Koiguchi’s boots did not have metal inserts for working in the disaster area.
The man pursed his lips. “Hmmm. Well, you’ve gone to the trouble to procure your own boots, I suppose we can supply inserts for you.”
“Oh, Thank-you, Thank-you!”
He rummaged around and got out a few metal inserts, but did not find the proper size, 24 centimeters. He cast a furtive eye at the forbidden extra boots, which could be seen through the window, all neatly lined up in a row.
“Hmmm. Well, look. You have obviously made an effort to supply your own boots, and your friend has gone to all of this trouble. It would be a pity to get your friend’s boots dirty. I tell you what. These extra boots have metal inserts already in them. Why don’t we borrow these, just on this one occasion.
“Are you sure?” I asked humbly.
He nodded decisively. “Yes.”
When I next saw Mr. Koiguchi, I told him the whole story. “So you see, your boots were very important,” I said, “Even though we did not use them.” Mr. Koiguchi’s boots had allowed me to demonstrate my sincerity as a volunteer.
As it turned out, the change in boot policy was just one of many changes in how the Center was being managed, one month after my previous visit. Tono Magokoro Net was proving itself to be a “learning organization.” I was amazed at the vitality of an organization that could evolve and adapt, even while the people at the front desk came and went.

10 Bag Trip

On July 4th the three of us headed for Tono City; this would be my third time volunteering, the first for Will and Ben. As it turned out, hauling 10 pieces of luggage (including backpacks) to Tono was perhaps the most physically taxing activity of our entire trip. We schlepped our ten bags to the airport, from the terminal to a bus (with no luggage compartment), from the bus to the train terminal, on the train (again, no place to put baggage), and over the train tracks to the station exit. We had then intended to walk to the Welfare Center, but the miraculous Mr. Koiguchi and his wife were waiting with their car. Mr. Koiguchi did not balk (although he did raise his eyebrows)at the huge volume of luggage, but managed to stow it in his trunk (after taking apart most of the inside of his car to do so.) Arriving at the Center, we hauled the huge bulk of our luggage into the gym, created a giant pile, and thankfully proceeded to forget most of it for the remainder of our stay.

Blog, Interrupted.

Yes, my Blog ran right smack into a wall—a wall called my two sons, who arrived on June 11th and promptly commandeered my life and computer. My rarified world of coffee sipping and blog composing was rudely ripped to shreds, as the spectre of my real life, “working mother,” returned.

Now, I find that almost two months have passed, and my blog has joined the millions of accessible but abandoned Blogcastles out there in Etherdom. However, despite the fact that I’m already back in Minnesota and settling back into my accustomed habits, I want to properly finish my blog and let my fans (at least five!) know about the remainder of my experience. Therefore, I made a mini-vow to spend the next week on a wrap-up. Not only will this serve as a record of our June and July in Japan, it will also be a space for me to ponder my experience, and to brainstorm how to continue my involvement with Northeastern Japan.