“So what are you going to do tomorrow, at 2:46?” My friend asks me soberly, yesterday morning.
"I don’t know yet," I say.
Probably, I think to myself, I am going to watch TV and cry. That, after all, is what I did last year at this time. And in order to do so, I will have to go back to my home in Tokyo. I can’t stay in Kesennuma for another day. I am not running any workshops on March 11 anyway. And even if I did, nobody would come.
I was invited to stay here for the remainder of the weekend, to observe the one-year-anniversary with the friends and acquaintances I have made in the disaster area since March 11 last year. And yet, despite all my self-interested curiosity, I just can’t seem to fight this overwhelming feeling that I don’t belong in Kesennuma on March 11th. Rather, I belong in Tokyo, with my husband, watching TV and crying. That is where my roots are. That is what started all of this.
I was only going to volunteer once in Tohoku, with kids in Fukushima for two weeks, but the people I met up there changed me, and I have traveled back and forth to the effected area over twenty times since. In a lot of ways, this year has felt like a lifetime. The experience has been immense.
But as a volunteer, there was one thing I could never do: cry. In fact, I have learned all sorts of new ways to suppress and fight back tears. And trust me, it really comes in handy when the kids start talking to you openly about their classmates, siblings and even parents who were washed away. Holding my breath or jumping or jogging in place really helps at those times, I find. After all, nobody up north wants volunteers to come all the way from Tokyo just to feel sorry for them. There have been enough tears already.
Maybe I knew that I would not be able to keep myself from crying today, and that is part of why I decided to return to Tokyo for the anniversary. One of the most resonant unwritten rules I have observed in all my tours through the tsunami-hit region is this: volunteers don’t cry. We travel to the effected region in order to share love and hope with the victims, not to commiserate.
Granted, volunteering is changing my life and broadening my horizons in ways I never could have imagined before. And yet, the moment the clock strikes 2:46 this afternoon as I sit in front of the TV to observe the moment of silence, it suddenly becomes very, very apparent just how fortunate I am not to have to be a volunteer today.
It`s Christmas Eve, and we are on our way to the Watanoha district of Ishinomaki. It is dark and snowing. I know this route. You cross over the bridge and suddenly everything is gone. Well, almost everything. Torn curtains jut out from crushed and shattered windows, fluttering in the cold wind. The snow accumulates on the bare foundations of houses that fared even worse. Watanoha has an undeniably creepy aura to it at night lately.
I don`t want to be here. Well, I did make the plans to come volunteer with the kids in Ishinomaki over Christmas weekend, but that was when my husband was going to come with me, before he got sick and had to stay home. I feel a bit lonely without him, even though I am not alone. I am the car with S, who runs the NPO I work with, and his nephew K, a high school senior who volunteers with the kids every day and is massively loved by them all despite his punk-rock hairstyle and multiple earrings.
After spending the day volunteering, we are on our way to S’s friend’s house, for a Christmas dinner of sorts. But here? In Watanoha, amidst all this? Then there, in the middle of the wreckage, stands something quite out of place: a house. It's as if it shouldn't be there. But there it is.
S’s friend M and his family meet us at the door, to help us step over some scattered debris at the entranceway of their home. But the entranceway, it turns out, is the only part of the house that sustained any real damage. While the view outside is thoroughly apocalyptic, the inside of their house is immaculate. It is bright and warm, with a tall, fake Christmas tree and a large flat screen TV. An electronic dancing Santa clause under the tree comes to life without warning every fifteen minutes or so, to sing a Christmas carol at random.
I am well acquainted with M, his wife and his two children, an eight-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy. Since losing his job to the tsunami, M is always taking care of the neighborhood kids, many of whom have lost parents and homes in the disaster. I have given free English classes to this particularly charming and well-behaved group of kids on several occasions, all organized for me by M and S.
But this is the first time I am seeing M`s house. As I stand inside the house, wide-eyed, some explanations are in order. Apparently the house was just very well built, and also managed to avoid the path of trucks, boats and other houses as they charged through the area. The first floor of the house was flooded nearly to the ceiling, M says. Still, unlike the shadow of a house across the way, which is missing its entire first floor, the walls of this home did not break off and float away. The older buildings, M tries to explain, never stood a chance.
But in the end there is no truly adequite explanation. I feel like I am standing inside of a miracle. And eventually, with the help of the kids, my mood lightens considerably.
We all sit down to eat, and I sample whale meat for the first time in my life, which I have no business refusing. It tastes a bit like chicken. We are half way through the meal when M`s wife stops the conversation in its tracks. “Did you hear that?” She says to everyone at the table, “I heard some bells upstairs.” “I think I heard it too,” her husband plays along. I didn`t hear anything, S replies honestly, and M narrows his eyes at his friend. “I heard it! “ I say.
“You’d better check upstairs,” The mother advises the kids, “to see if he came.” The boy and the girl look at each other with wide eyes and get up to ascend the stairs. Some squeals of happiness ensue and the two kids trickle down the stairs carrying piles of presents. For a split second I remember what it was like to believe in Santa Clause, and how indescribably awesome a feeling that was.
At one point, when the little girl opens up a package containing a Burberry sweater set that she had asked for, she appears so happy that she is distressed. It is hard to tell what she is thinking. “Oh no, oh no,” she is saying.
“What is the matter,” her mother asks.
“Santa is going to run out of money!” the eight-year-old expresses her sincere worry.
Earlier in the day, she and her mother explain to me, the girl already received a PSP from the “volunteer santa.” The “volunteer santa,” in case you are wondering, is santa`s friend, someone from a church group of sorts who was sent by santa himself to their school in order to collect letters to Santa Claus. Volunteer Santa then returned on Friday to answer their letters.
“It is all right,” her father eases her mind, “Santa is extremely rich.”
Before coming up to the Tohoku region to work with the kids earier in December and then again over Christmas weekend, I could not help but wonder whether the children here would still believe in Santa Clause. After all, how could a character like Santa truly exist in a world where oceans rise up and violently swallow villages? Then again, ever since March 11 these kids have been fully conscious of all the help and aid their town has received from gift-giving strangers all over the world. I can say with certainty that the spirit of giving is alive and well in Tohoku, and perhaps this alone has given the children more reason than ever to believe in Santa.
Live in Tokyo long enough, and you will start to think that neon is a naturally occurring color of the rainbow. Or at least you would have, before the power saving campaign that followed the Fukushima meltdown, before setsuden.
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, when people started to seriously consider shutting down Japan`s nuclear reactors, I thought all that talk sounded pretty idealistic. Nuclear power was obviously dangerous, but then again so was not having any electricity. And to get through a Tokyo summer in our resource starved nation's capital without nuclear power, well that seemed like a truly impossible feat.
But then we did it. We all worked together and we did it. And suddenly it all didn't seem so impossible anymore.
There are even some things I will miss about the summer of setsuden. For one, my husband is always hot and I am always cold, so the setting on our air conditioner has been a cause of constant conflict in our marriage. Not so, however, during setsuden, when we were to discover there were actually some things more important than keeping our small apartment at the Optimum Comfortable Temperature.
Another thing I will miss about the past summer is the "cool biz" campaign, where office workers were encouraged to dress down for work to keep cool. This did not effect me, per se, because I do not work in an office. However, the past summer was different from the ones that came before in that people on the trains and on the streets no longer looked at me and assumed I was a Russian prostitute, just because I was dressed for the hot weather. And I appreciate that!
I suppose setsuden's most inconvenient aspect for me was that the trains and subways stopped running as frequently, and this made me even less punctual than I already am (which means very, very late to anyone who knows me). In the long run, however, when I stopped taking for granted that a train would soon arrive at whatever time I happened to stumble into the station, I actually had to memorize the train schedules and as a result I began commuting in a more timely manner than ever before.
Yes, and I realize all of these things just in time for the setsuden campaign to start tapering off. Figures.
So now, with the brunt of the power saving campaign behind us, are we just supposed to go back to the "normal" level of power consumption we had before the earthquake? Are we really going to go back to our dependence on nuclear power, as if we haven`t learned anything at all?
How awesomely lame that would be.
And yet, that is how it is shaping up. The neon advertising is back up and in full force. Heated toilet seats in public restrooms are warming our bare bums to full capacity, whether we like it or not. But even more disheartening, the new prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, seems fairly bent on the idea of getting the nuclear power industry back to Business as Usual.
When Kan was prime minister, all the media ever reported on was how unpopular he was and how much even those in his own party were pressuring him to resign. And yet, it always seemed to me that he was the only politician in Kasumigaseki who really gave a shit about turning the nation away from its dependence on nuclear energy and moving us towards more renewable sources. In retrospect, I suppose being the man in charge amidst a crisis that nearly turned Tokyo into a nuclear wasteland can do that to a guy. Still the lynch mob descended.
After all, this is how Japan Inc. traditionally deals with its problems. You find the highest ranking official and force him to resign (or in feudal times, commit harakiri). Then presto: all the company`s perceived guilt dies with the scapegoat. This is how you deal with a crisis without ever having to change anything, especially not the circumstances that got you there in the first place.
I feel like I notice every unnecessary light in the city as it gets turned back on, and it depresses me. I can`t help it: it makes me think of the evacuee children I worked with in Fukushima back in April and May. They are hard to forget, especially when they are still writing me letters and sending texts to my phone about classes, sports and pop idols. Nobody says this often, but the majority of the nuclear power once generated by the Fukushima power plant was likely sent straight over to Tokyo. And as a neon-saturated Tokyoite, I can`t help feeling like I am part of the reason why those kids can`t go home.
Just outside my Tokyo apartment building, there are three beverage vending machines, all placed in a row. Before the earthquake, their contents reflected brightly across the empty streets all hours of the night. Then their lights went out after the quake, and it felt weird at first but we got used to it. The vending machines were functioning, after all; they were still there for me when I suddenly craved a bottle of vitamin water or a can of coke at one in the morning.
Over six months of this and you start to forget just how harshly, unnecessarily bright these machines once were. That is, until they start getting turned back on. Two out of three of them are lit up already. The third vending machine, however, the one in the middle, continues to observe setsuden. Sadly for our lone hero, however, the blinding lights of the beverage machines that surround it make it seem as if the center machine is not even there. I have to squint my eyes to see its contents, and even then the labels on the drinks are blurry.
Still it holds out, resisting the literally glaring pressure from both sides to conform. If only we all were so brave.
Yes, really. Japanese people have actually taken to the streets en masse to protest something. (And it isn`t even China!) In my experience, you have to understand, the Japanese have not always been the rise-up-and-take-to-the-streets type of crowd. So when a friend invited me to check out the anti-nuclear rally in Tokyo yesterday, I was sure there would be at least 2 or 3 other people there.
So here is a video I took last Sunday during a taiko performance at a festival held on a hill beside the rows of temporary housing in Koizumicho, Kesennuma. You cannot see it from the position of the camera, but everything on all sides of this hill- basically the entire town, has been obliterated by the tsunami. Six months on, there is still wreckage in every direction.
Yet this town`s will to survive is unmistakable.
The performers are the children of this village who were fortunate enough to have escaped to higher ground on March 11. The dancing tiger, who it is apparently supposed to give you intelligence by biting your head, is likewise portrayed by some very dedicated town residents.
My favorite drummer is the littlest girl at the front center, who does not seem to notice or care that she is off beat for almost the entire duration of the performance. Later on in the day, when I am doing a craft workshop with these kids, she will string together a very long necklace of beads. When she holds up the thread to show her mother, however, all the beads fall crashing down into the dirt. While I and all the other adults present gasp and brace ourselves for her immanent tears, the little girl only laughs at the ridiculousness of what she has done. Then, surprising us all, she happily begins her project all over again.
For Many years now, the Japanese pro-whaling/dolphin hunting community and the largely foreign groups who staunchly oppose these activities have been engaging each other in a constant, unending, epic battle to discern who can be the most annoying.
Take last year, when the conservationist Peter Bethune takes his expensive, high tech protest boat Ady Gil and stations it right in the path of the Shin Maru 2.
Annoying.
Yet the Shin Maru 2 doesn`t stop or slow down, slicing the Ady Gil in half and leaving it to sink.
Very annoying.
Some time later, after it has already been ruled that both parties had been at fault in the collision, the former captain of the boards the boat to make a citizen`s arrest and present the whaling captain with an invoice for the destruction of the Adt Gil.
Obnoxious.
Then, instead of kicking him off their ship the crew of the shin maru arrests Bethune and brings him back to Japan, causing much unnecessary drama.
Quite very obnoxious.
To retaliate, in an editorial entitled "Captain Peter Bethune- The Last Samurai!," the Sea Shepard conservation society claims not only that Peter Bethune is a prisoner of war, but that he is also "the only true samurai presently residing in Japan."
WOW that is obnoxious!
So when Bethune arrived in Japan, the ultra nationalists gather to demand he be given the death penalty, as if that wouldn't not lead to any international repercussions.
This is quite possibly the most annoying of all. For when it comes to pure unadultered obnoxiousness, bear in mind that the Japanese right wing is hardly ever outdone. This is the citizens brigade, mind you, that camps outside foreign residences and schools blaring god-awful WW2 battle hymns and shouting racially charged insults through megaphones.
But wait, hold that trophy. Just today, just now, I have read about what might be the most annoying action ever taken by anti-whale/dolphin hunting activists, ever.
Get this, the star of the dolphin-hunting documentary "The Cove," Ric O`Barry, will come to the city of Taiji next week at the start of the town`s annual dolphin hunt to:
"lead a prayer ceremony in Taiji for people who have died in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster and for the dolphins about to die in the hunt. He is traveling by bus with two dozen people who are all dolphin-lovers, he said."
I hate to spoil the opportunistic nature of this "vigil," but it seems that some people are too busy loving dolphins to even bother looking at a map. Taiji is in Wakayama, which is all the way down on the southern end of Honshu, nowhere near the areas of northern Japan that were ravaged by the tsunami!
Given the cute and cuddly nature of dolphins, is difficult for anyone who hasn`t been brought up in the tradition to actually support the dolphin hunt in Taiji. Still, these "vigil holding" protesters are driving me alarmingly close.
I never would have imagined this site would turn into a sporadically updated volunteer blog, but hey, shit happens.
Last weekend was spent in Kesennuma, the port town that rose to an unfortunate fame after being inundated by the tsunami in under seven minutes, then burning for four days straight afterwards.
And yet, over this past weekend there was a summer festival at the volunteer center, where I did my part to run a craft workshop for kids. I got to see BEGIN perform nada sou sou live, which was a very special treat for me seeing as before that day I had only heard the song performed by drunken old men in hostess bars.
ANYWAY... there were these huge sunflowers growing everywhere in the town, even in and around the wreckage. The faces of those flowers reminded me a lot of all the amazing people I have recently met in Tohoku, especially the tsunami survivors who organized and ran the festival over the weekend. So I made a new video =)
It`s not exactly the feel good youtube movie of the year, but this is still what it looks like. The crazy part was that everyone on the bus kept talking about how much better and cleaner than before it all was.
Gratefully, joyfully, painfully, pissedoffedly, reflectively, creatively SOBER since January 3, 2007! I have worked as a nightclub hostess, a pre-school teacher and a Japanese-English translator. Right now I am an English tutor and a non-fiction author who is trying very, very hard to become a novelist. Tokyo is home.
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