North to Sendai

On June 1st, Wednesday morning, we left the Tokyo hotel at 8:00 for the drive north to Sendai. Getting out of a huge megalopolis (25 million people in the greater Tokyo area) took quite some time! I noticed many signs like the following, which says 'Ganbare Higashi Nihon'. Ganbare means hang in there, do your best, go for it. Higashi Nihon  means Eastern Japan.

We made two stops along the way. Here's our tour bus. At our lunch stop, the rest area restaurant folks were very busy filling our orders! A few of us Japanese speakers helped call out ticket numbers in English.

We saw this group of Tokyo Metropolitan Police. They were on their way to one of the affected towns to work. Ever since the Great Hanshin Earthquake in my hometown of Kobe in 1995, each prefecture is assigned a certain function in case of a disaster elsewhere in the country.

Upon arrival in Sendai at 2:00 pm, our first stop was at Sendai TV, the local affiliate of Fuji TV, for a welcome and thanks for coming, and a brief video of the tsunami damage. We also got an orientation from Mercy Corps, who along with Peace Winds Japan, was coordinating our volunteer efforts for the next two days.

From there we went to a small Buddhist temple for a memorial service to the disaster victims. After the priests chanted for the souls of the dead, one of the young Muslim students in our group spoke briefly about what Islam says about compassion, and then Valerie Day, a Portland singer (she was also part of Nu Shooz back in the mid-80's, with the hit song "I Can't Wait") sang "Imagine" by John Lennon. Sean Egusa, another member on the trip, ended by reading some haiku written by Japanese about the tsunami. We were certainly an ecumenical group!

As I was standing on the sidewalk waiting to get back on the bus, a Westerner walked by and asked what was going on. When I told him we were there to do some volunteer work for tsunami victims, he said "It's too late." I was left speechless by his rudeness and inhumanity, and could only manage "Well, we'll do what we can." Makes me wonder what HE had done to help out! Probably nothing.

IASW ALERT #3. At a ramen shop that night with 7 others, I was asked which part of Portland I lived in. When it got narrowed down to the street, Max and Carol Lyon said they had lived in the corner house by the school in the early 90s. Ah, now they looked familiar! Their college-age daughter was along, making this a family experience.