Plan for the Future

This summer Samantha and I will be returning to America. For those of you who are hoping that we will come all the way back the Chattanooga we may disappoint you. We will be moving to Columbus, Ohio. We are both really looking forward to going back to America. Not looking forward to the many, many things necessary to get ready to go back. Seriously, there is a ton of stuff to try and do, both here in Japan and in Ohio. The thing that is most occupying our mind though is finding somewhere to live. We thought about living in married student housing at OSU, where Samantha will attend. Then we noticed that the website doesn’t even have pictures of the buildings just artist renderings. It’s not really a good sign if the school is too ashamed of its housing to show pictures of it, so we are looking off campus. You would think after living in Japan, which is famous for high rent and small spaces, almost anything would be an upgrade. However, for us this is not the case. We have really cheap rent here and have a fairly spacious house because we live in the country. So pretty much no matter where we live in Columbus the rent will be higher and the place smaller. There will be two huge benefits to anywhere we live in Columbus that I can name right now: central heat and an unbroken roof. Central heat will be so great. Another great thing about Columbus will be that we have friends there. I have moved across the world knowing no one twice in my life and it will be great to head back to somewhere I know people. Also, our Columbus friends have been great about answering question and have even made us maps of the city marked out but what areas are good and safe to live in and what aren’t. One area is labeled, “a very bad choice.”  The area between “best part of town” and “a very bad choice” is labeled “pushing it.” There are plenty of things that I will miss about Ichinohe but it will be great to live in a place with more going on.

I will be starting at Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio this fall and be going for a Master of Divinity. I’m really looking forward to going back to school. It’s been long enough that most of college is starting to get the rose tinted glasses treatment. Though some parts definitely aren’t, like navigating school bureaucracy. Still, there is no way a small seminary and ETSU can be equally confusing. There are two things that I’m most looking forward to about starting Seminary. One, being forced to do disciplined study which will expose me to ideas that are important but I might not encounter in normal life. Lately I have been reading a lot of non-fiction but there is no real rhyme or rhythm to it I just go with what’s available and what interests me at the moment. Class forces you to focus on things and go deeper then you might otherwise. Also, in the area of disciplined study, hearing what other students get from the subject will be great. Here I read a book, bore Samantha to tears talking about it, reread it and end up with two prospective mine and the authors. (Three if it’s something that interests Samantha too.) I miss kicking around the ideas of a book with other people. Here is a rose tinted glasses moment because in college class it was never the ideal discussion, there were people who didn’t read, people offended by and only interested in minutia, people who refused to understand any other point than their own, people who raised less than stellar points like they where handed down from on high and then the small group of students trying to really understand the piece. Looking back though I have to wonder how many times other students thought I was a part of the groups of people who made the discussion suck. Probably more times than I’m comfortable admitting and they were probably right sometimes too. With Seminary they’re hopefully won’t be anyone who doesn’t read and we will all probably take turns focusing on minutia, not understanding each other, and raising bad points like they are great. That’s all a part of the process of understanding. The second thing I’m looking forward to about being back in America in general and school in particular is a library full of English language books. This is one area I don’t think I’ve exaggerated how great it was in my mind. A well stocked college library and city library can provide 80% of the books I want to read and a college library can usually borrow another 15% from another college. It’s great. I even started a list of non-fiction books I want to read when I get back. It’s at around 37 books now and will get longer before I come back. It’s also kind of an odd list so definitely some inter-library loans in my future, but I can do that.

On an unrelated note here is something that recently happened at Chokai Elementary. Since the weather is nice I have gone back to riding my bike to school. As it happened last Thursday was bike safety day at school. That means that the students, who usually aren’t allowed to ride to Elementary school bring there bikes for a safety class from the local police. Since I was the only teacher who had a bike I got asked to help out. The first part though was a safety lecture that never brought up the importance of helmets. That’s right even though so many people ride bikes in Japan the only people who wear helmets are middle school students (required), serious road bikers and me. So that bit was strange at least. After the rules of the road lecture, I practiced riding in a large figure 8 with the fourth grade. Then, I rode with them thorough an model intersection that the police had set up on the soccer field. Lastly, I road chase behind the classes as they practiced riding on the open road, WITHOUT HELMETS, to make sure they all would pass the safety check. At recess the older kids and I played cops and robbers riding on bikes in the field ,which probably flew smack in the face of safety but was a lot of fun.

Just the Facts

Okay so here's the story.

We had been looking for some way, any way really, to help with the Tsunami relief effort. When the news came, it came quickly. We attended church for the first time since the earthquake on the 27th. Our local trains were not running before that time, and gas was scarce. There was literally no way to attend services. We had been communicating with the church members though. They knew that we were interested in volunteering. So on Sunday the 27th, they told us that there was going to be a Volunteer group that we could join, provided that we were willing to leave the next day.

So, with a quick call to Claire to see if she was in or out, we signed up.

Monday started at about 7 AM. We rode the local trains to Okunakayama, the town our church is in, and met up with the van that would be taking all of us to the coast. Then we had a 3 hour bus ride. Teperatures were not too cold. ( 0 Celcius is now my definition of "not too cold". ) Aside from a few closed stores and a gas station that was only allowing emergency vehicles, the edges of Miyako didn't look like a disaster area at all. A little further towards the coast and we started to see scenes like this:


We quickly arrived at Miyako church. We had lunch there and then divided into groups. Because the church was mostly clean we went out into the surrounding neighborhood to help. The men went to the nearby shops and houses, helping people bring their furniture outside to clean. The women were tasked with spreading this white powder around. The bag had several complex kanji on the side so, at first, Claire and I had no idea what we were spreading around. When we looked it up later, we discovered that we were spreading limestone, or chalk if you will, around. The chalk worked to wick up the excess moisture that was still a very big problem in the wake of the tsunami. We through it in alleys that had turned into mud slicks and in the rooms of houses where mold would soon be a problem when the warmth of spring hit. (We don't have many pictures of this time, or really of any other times we were working, because the work was filthy and we couldn't hold the camera.) After several hours of this we traveled, as a group to see the edges of the coast. These were the areas hardest hit. I don't really have much I can say about these pictures. I've tried to include some that Caleb hadn't already posted.




There is one thing Caleb forgot to mention entirely though. While we were walking through this area, we came across the amazing balancing log. Apparently the tsunami had washed some freshly cut logs away from some logging camp somewhere. One of these logs landed perfectly on top of the ladder used to climb down to the beach. If you poked it, as you see me doing below, it would wobble very slightly and very slowly, but it obviously had no intentions of falling off.


As I mentioned in an earlier post. Many houses had circles on them. I believe it meant that the house had been searched. Sometimes cars had them too.




After our trip to coast, we traveled to a kindergarten that still had power. We ate dinner together as a group and then split up. The women stayed in the kindergarten to sleep and the men went back to the church. The church did not have power and I am told it was a chilly night.

The next morning we ate breakfast and set off for Kamaishi.
When we pulled into Kamaishi church I was immediately struck by how surreal the situation was. The church building looked almost completely fine, with the exception of the fact that it was completely surrounded by rubble. The inside of the church was a completely different story. The main rooms had been shoveled out, but there were still places, such as the insides of cabinets and drawers, where the mud was three inches thick. Keep in mind that this was three weeks after the tsunami.

This is were I should make a note about Japanese dirt, or at least Iwate dirt. It's nearly black. Coming from a clay ridden state like Tennessee, I was shocked to discover that dirt did not have to be orange. Unfortunately in this case, Iwate's dark, rich soil makes a mud that will stain anything it touches. Any fabric or unvarnished piece of wood that was touched by the mud had a dark stain that could not be washed off.

We through so many things away. I learned a new term for trash ( gomi) so that I could ask if whatever thing I held in my hands was going to the wash pile or the trash pile. We saved plates and bowls, but threw out flatware and cutlery. All electronic devices went on the pile. We went by whatever the group leader told us. One of the only things I didn't have to ask whether or not to save was a metal communion tray.

After a long while, we managed to get the kitchen of the church relatively clean. It was at this point that we investigated the surrounding area some.

That evening, we spent the night in Tono church. The pastor and his wife layed out beds and futon for the women. Having a real shower and falling asleep under a down comforter felt like heaven.

This was hanging in Tono church. It is an image of Jesus washing feet, done in the traditional style of ink painting.
This is the sanctuary of Tono Church.After breakfast, we returned to Kamaishi to continue our cleaning. This time we moved all of the donated materials into the kitchen that was cleaned the previous day. One of the women in our group started sorting the materials into boxes. Meanwhile, the rest of us tried to clean the sanctuary. This is what the sanctuary looked like when we were done cleaning. You can still see the mark on the walls where the water reached. We were instructed not to clean the walls, because all of the walls were going to have to be ripped out and replaced.


I wanted to leave you with an amusing story, so I saved this for last.

On the second day of our volunteer work, we all piled into the van and blearily tried to keep our exhausted heads from nodding. Our driver navigated through the rubble-filled streets. Out of nowhere Caleb shouts "Oh my god, a BEAR!"

All of us sat upright and screamed ( in both English and Japanese), " What? A bear!" We plastered ourselves to the passenger side windows and just barely manage to catch a glimpse of this:It was a taxidermy bear, which we figured out when the van doubled back so we could all take a look. Looking at the pictures, it's perfectly obvious what it is. Getting only a seconds worth of a half glimpse in the middle of rubble though... well lets just say it looked a lot more alive.

Just the feeling

It's tough to really describe the feelings that come to you when you stare out over a leveled suburb. It's tough but I'll try:


You look, you blink, and you can't believe it was ever a row of tidy houses. You keep looking and you think about how much wood there is. You expected to see electronics, toys, and broken tableware. You still see those things, but they are greatly outnumbered by splintered beams, ragged walls, and roofs that have been dashed to pieces. The reality is that there's a whole lot more wood in a person's physical existence than anything else.

You blink again and you see a woman's shoe. A dark, low-heeled pump. You think to yourself "I bet she's missing those. They look like the kind of shoes you only wear to formal occasions and funerals. I hope she's still alive enough to be missing those shoes."

You tear your mind away from that, and blink at the unchanged sky.

You look back again and realize that the houses that are still standing have circles spray painted on them. Some of them have an X as well. Before you can stop it your brain pops up with a theory " The circles mean a house has been searched, an x means a body."

You say something, anything to stop thinking about that, about things you can't know. Maybe something like "I can't believe it." ,or "Those poor people". No matter how much you believe the sentiment, it still sounds so empty.

It's difficult to even form prayer. When there are thousands dead, and thousands more missing, what do you ask for? For time to turn back? For houses to fly back onto their foundations like a tape being rewound?

Why pray for one and not all? Can a person pray for it all?
It all seems so arbitrary.

The only emotion that is easy to place, an the one that stays with you long after, is a feeling of being very, very small.


…

I promise I'll post something later that talks about what we actually did while we were there. I'm working on it now. I'll try to even include something funny. I just wanted to set this up first. Because what I described above was buzzing incessantly in the back of my head the entire time we were there.

Volunteer Trip To Miyako and Kamaishi

These are our pictures of Miyako and Kamaishi. The destruction was truly unbelievable. I saw it and still can understand it. I’m not a good enough writer to tell you how it felt to see it all. There is one thing that I do understand though. The church in Japan is strong. I’m proud that I’m a part of that.

Our first view of Miyako's damage.

Arcade Games

Look carefully for the boat.

Car scrubbies on slippers to clean the floor.

We washed the furniture at this store.

Road in Miyako.

A boat in a road.

Coke Machine

There were a lot of boats.

Pushed down by the water going back to sea.

Close to the sea.

Japanese soldier cleans up.

The building was a bath house.

Fishing buoys on a pole.

This building was knocked over the the two floors separated.

They said the wave was 20 meters here.

Twisted train tracks and a car.

This is how high the water was in the Miyako church.

Fire is also a danger after a quake the building in front burned down.

House against a bridge.

Boat on a post office.

Boat on a post office 2.

Broken Sea Wall.

There was a Mitsubishi dealer here.

Kamaishi Church.

Samantha is rain suit cleaning mud out of kitchen.

Sanctuary filled with donations.

School turned army camp.

Many broken cars.

Double pained glass broken and with sea water in it.

Trying to pry open swelled trap door to clear out water.

I knocked this car headlight off the roof of the Kamaishi church. It looked almost new.

Short Videos.