Dear All, 友達の皆さん、
I arrived in Japan two days ago, so I am very alert now at 5:35 in the morning. Although I am starting a blog, besides being in Japan I don't really have a theme. I'm the kind of person who writes crazy rough drafts and fixes them later, so any blog by me is likely to be just that, a crazy rough draft. Nevertheless, I wanted to blog (never done it before) for a few important reasons. First, I want to make sure Americans (that I know) continue to think about the earthquake in northern Japan, even if it's no longer in the news. Second, I wanted to blog about volunteering for a disaster, which I've never done before. I also wanted to ask myself some big questions about the act of volunteering for a disaster: Is it really useful for a 42 year old woman with no special talents to volunteer? Do the people in the area really want volunteers, or do they just want money? Why do I have this strong impluse to volunteer? Is there such a thing as altruism at all? Is all volunteering selfish from beginning to end?
Anyway, here I am in calm, pastoral Nishinomiya, hundreds of miles from northern Japan, preparing to find out. Meanwhile, I will be indirectly doing a little bit to help out by replacing an English teacher at Kobe College High School who left because of fears of radiation. Unlike the disaster area, Nishinomiya is perfectly calm, flowerful, and on vacation this week. I snapped a picture of an elderly man walking his dog by the river:
