Happy Birthday, dear Seiji

Seiji was at the same party where I committed the gaffe over the Tohoku dialect.  As one of the two youngest people there, he was in charge of the alcohol.  The pouring of it, that is.  Between the two young men, the party attendees were kept pretty happy.

I first met Seiji at the base where I stayed in Ofunato.  The building was also a drop-off point for relief supplies.  Trucks would come several times a week and the crew of young volunteers would unload the boxes of supplies and run them up the stairs to the front office.  The day I met him, the person running the office told me Seiji lost his mother in the tsunami.  She worked at the hospital in Rikuzentakata.  Since that day I would often sneak a glance at Seiji wondering how he was holding up.  What was his life like at home?  Did he have family?  Did he cry when he was alone?  Was he sleeping at night?

Back at the party, between shots of sake, shochu and bottles of beer, one of the party-goers leans over to me and said in an attempted whisper, "it's Seiji's birthday today."  Drunk men don't whisper very well.  Soon, people around the table were slapping Seiji on the back, offering him drinks, shouting "sit down, sit down!" as they made their way towards getting this young man as drunk as they were.

The party host looked at me through the commotion and said so very slyly, "you know, someone should sing him happy birthday," and next thing I knew all eyes were on me.

"Me?" I said.
"'Me?'" they mocked.  "Yes, you.  Of course you.  Do your Marilyn routine!"

Marilyn routine?!  What Marilyn routine?  Do all white women channel Marilyn Monroe?  I'm flattered and offended at the same time.

"Wait a minute," I stall.  "Do I look like Marilyn?"  They laugh.
"No, but I bet you can sing like her," one drunk man says and more people laugh.
"Oh, come on," I stall again.  Then it comes.
"Liza Minnelli!" another drunk man says and the laughter turns into howling.

Let me explain.  I most definitely do not look like Marilyn Monroe.  I do, however, look a lot like Liza Minnelli.  My short black hair, more often spiky than not, my nose (resembling Liza's more than I'm comfortable with) and my trademark eyeliner and lipstick has gotten me more comments about being a Liza Minnelli look-alike than I care to admit.  Now that the comparison is out there, what am I supposed to do?  Offer a rendition of "Happy Birthday" that sounds like "New York, New York"?  I attempt to stall some more.  Then I see Seiji looking at me.  I know right then I can't bow out of this.  I won't.

"Fine," I say, and grin.  "You want Happy Birthday?  I'll give you Happy Birthday."  Everyone claps and I silently curse.  Crap.  Crap, crap, crap.  I hate karaoke.  Singing in public for me is up there with going to the dentist.  I most definitely do not do solos.  That's the equivalent of a root canal.  To say I feel cornered doesn't begin to describe what I'm feeling.  Then I look at Seiji again.  I look at his father whom I'm introduced to for the first time tonight.  These men must be in incredible pain.  I have to do this.  I can.  I will.  I take a deep breath.  I know I'm being watched.

"Okay," I say.  "But, not Marilyn.  Okay?"
I hear some catcalls followed by several "Ooo-kaaay!"s and I begin.  It's a good thing I can sing.  It's a good thing I can carry a tune.  I sing Happy Birthday to Seiji who looks embarrassed.  I get all the way through and everyone hollers, claps, whistles, and pounds the table.  Seiji and I look at each other.  I smile.  He smiles back.  This man is young enough to be my son.  (So much nicer than saying I'm old enough to be his mother, don't you think?)  I silently hope this makes him happy and that this is a memory he'll take with him.  Tonight he was the center of attention not as the young man who lost his mother but as the man who has a future ahead of him.  Happy Birthday, Seiji.  May there be many more.

The Tohoku accent

I was warned about the Tohoku accent.  "You won't understand them," some said.  "It sounds like a foreign language," said others.  Bah.  It can't be that bad, right?  Japanese is Japanese.  The cocky linguist in me poo-pooed these warnings. 

Then it hits me.  The first day in Ofunato as I listened to people in a shelter share their stories I found myself listening and then listening harder.  I don't understand a lot of what I'm hearing.  Can this be happening?  The cocky me, the me that thought I could handle a slightly different accent is humbled from day one.  The accent here is that different. 

The longer I spent in Ofunato and Rikuzentakata the more I got used to it.  I came to the point I could understand what I was hearing.  I'm still having to listen and listen hard but I get it.  The cockiness returns.  I think to myself, "See.  It's not that bad."

Then it happened.  I am knocked down off my pedestal.  In public.  In front of others.  I made a total fool out of myself. 

I'm at a make-shift party.  I've been here six weeks and I share with those around me I will be leaving soon.

"I'm going to Tokyo first," I say.  "I need some time to myself."  They all nod.  They all know I'm a city girl and that living without hot water or a bath has been tough for me.  Then I get the question that erased all cockiness in me.
"Are you going to Izu?"  I pause.  Izu?  Izu is a peninsula southwest of Tokyo.  It's a resort area.  Do they think I'm going to Izu to relax?  I just said I'm going to Tokyo.  I'm confused.
"No, I'm not," I say back.  Now it's their turn to look confused.  Everyone looks at me.  I panic.  What did I say?  Is it an insult not to go to Izu?
"But you're leaving, right?" I'm asked again.  I'm confused again.
"Yes, I'm going."
"Are you going to Izu?"  Now I'm annoyed.  No, I am most definitely not going to Izu.  Why do they keep asking this?

Then a young woman sitting across from me bursts out laughing.
"Not, Izu," she says.  "Itsu.  Not I-zu."
I turn beat red.  I get it.  The dreaded Tohoku accent I was so sure I understood just turned me into a dufus.

Let me explain.  Itsu in Japanese is "when" and Izu is "Izu"--the resort area outside Tokyo.  The man asking the question said in Japanese, "Izu ikundesuka?" which translates into "Are you going to Izu?"  In the Tohoku dialect, "itsu" (when) sounds like "izu" meaning he was asking when I was leaving and not whether or not I was going to Izu.

I laugh.  So does everyone else.  I throw away all humility and say "your Tohoku accent is so hard to understand!" which they take as a compliment and laugh with me.  No.  Not with.  I'm being laughed at but this time around the joke is on me.  Laugh at me all you will.  I deserve that one.

Before and After

I want to give you a tangible example of something we've done here.  Myself included, of course.  This is a photo (taken by an All Hands staff member) of a home we cleaned out before we started.

This is after.  The same house.

This is a bunch of us outside the home having a strategy meeting.

The owner if this building is the man in red.  On a different note, the city has come through with heavy machinery and cleared up all of the piles of rubble in front of the houses on both sides of the street.  It's slow-going.  They go about 10 meters per day.  There's that much to remove.

See the house on the right side of the road three down from us?  The tannish/brownish house?  This is another house that the group worked on.  The son of the family, a man in his 30s was in the house when the first wave hit.  He ran upstairs and waited for the water to recede and when it did, he ran down and fled to safety, higher ground to the far right of the photo (out of the picture).  Imagine being in your home when the wave hit.  The man in red, the owner of the home in this photo did the same thing.  He waited out the tsunami on the second floor.  What must go through someone's mind when faced with a real-life life or death situation like that?  For that, I'll muck out houses and interpret stories that make me cry.  Bring it on.

Laryngitis: Literally and Figuratively

Well, it's happened.  The stress, or perhaps the germs of the twenty-plus others I share a room with every night has caught up with me.  I've lost my voice.  Laryngitis?  Strep throat?  Just a bad cold?  It really doesn't matter.  I'm hoarse and sound like a frog trying to sing.  It's really that bad.

Which then got me thinking of the irony of all this.  I'm an interpreter.  No voice?  I don't work.  It's that simple.  It's on me to recover as quickly as possible and I have no doubt I'll bounce back.  I'm not worried about that.  Take this idea of an interpreter without a voice one step further.  No interpreter (if I were the sole interpreter) means no words.  No words means no communication (unless they revert to miming their words to get the point across).

This concept of "no words" has been something I've struggled with from day one here.  I'm not someone who struggles with not finding the right words.  Words make up my business and have for over twenty years.  I know how to make myself clear.  I know how to get my point across.  Or, so I thought.  Since being here, I have found myself with what I'll call "figurative laryngitis."  I've lost the ability to find the right words.  I have use the same words like "it's intense" or "catastrophic devastation" over and over again.  Perhaps I need to start carrying a thesaurus with me?  I feel stuck not being able to find the right words to properly describe what I'm seeing, feeling or hearing.

So, as I lay around taking all sorts of medication and hoping for a quick recovery, I'm going to spend the day looking for words to describe what I'm going through.  I actually have time today.  I can't speak and so I'm really not much good to anyone.  Add to this, I'm probably a walking Petri dish of germs, contagious and all, so staying away from people would be a good thing today.  This gives me time to reflect, so I will.

Oh.  That walk I said I would be taking today?  I won't be.

Something personal

I'm a bit fried tonight.  I'm not exactly sure why but I'm beat.  Maybe it's the sleeping-on-concrete that's getting to me.  I'm not quite sure.

All this to say, I honestly don't have a story for you tonight from people I've spoken to recently but I do have a story from me.  It's not earth-shattering news or anything except to say I'm giving you a heads up. 

Tomorrow is my two week mark.  I've found I have a pattern in my moods and my tolerance for holding things in.  I have four days where I'm fine and then I follow that with a meltdown day.  Today is day four.  I'm scheduled for a meltdown tomorrow.

I've felt it coming on all day.  I've fought back tears multiple times and have been okay not breaking down in public.  I'm not sure I can do that tomorrow.  My heads up is essentially to say I probably won't be writing much tomorrow--I'll need another night where I walk around and cry--or I'll unload onto all of you in a way I can't predict quite yet.

I do have a story.  It's one of those moments I had to hold back and not breakdown.  There are three women from the community we've spoken to over the past several days who have offered to help with the cooking.  We will have 20 people staying in one of the new bases (which I'll move into tomorrow) and we need someone to help cook dinner.  This is meant to be a paid part-time position but these women said they would be willing to volunteer their time.  Their exact words were "we're volunteering so you can volunteer."  Hold back sob, hold back sob, hold back sob.

Then one of the women asks how we're going to bathe.  We say we aren't sure yet (buckets, probably?) as there's no shower facility in the building or hot water.  One of the women says she could offer her bath for us five nights a week.  I almost lose it.  Dirty, smelly volunteers, many of whom are foreign, walking in and out of a stranger's home five nights a week (in shifts, of course)?  This is quite an offer.  People are good.  I'm reminded of that everyday.

Not feeling guilty

I wrote yesterday about daffodils and how they anger me.  I see more today.  Of course.  It's spring.  More flora will bloom in the next several weeks.  I realize it would behoove me to find a way to enjoy nature's beauty and not be constantly angered by the inequality of how it behaves.  I realize this.

It hit me this morning as we were mucking out a man's yard.  Half of his trees were blooming and the other half were dead.  He pointed out his rose bushes and said, "if they soak in salt water long enough evidently they die."  Neither of us knew that.  It's not common knowledge now, is it--except it's not rocket science and once I realize roses aren't meant to be underwater, much less salt water it all seems pretty obvious.  He was lamenting the loss of his bushes and trees when he pointed out his daffodils and tulips.  I now hate tulips as well.  I just do.

My phone rang and it was "the official" (again) and so I walked across the street to get away from the yard to take the call.  My dislike for nature is something to behold.  Again, I'm not proud of it, but I claim it.  Who goes around saying "I don't like nature"?  Right?

I pace as I talk on the phone saying "hai" (yes) a lot.  I thank him for all he's done, say things that he'll like, ask him yet one more favor.  I keep pacing.  Then I look down.  I see them.  More daffodils.  These are daffodils that will clearly not survive.  There are no flowers.  The stalks are yellowing.  These must have been affected by the salt water in a way I can't explain.

If you're a nature lover and you don't like seeing things die then you should probably stop reading here.  I'm not proud of what I did but neither do I feel guilty.  Here it is:  I stomped on them.  If felt good.  It's my one small act of rebellion against beauty that destroys.  It did appease my anger even if it was just for a bit.  I doubt I'll need to do it again.  If I do, I probably won't tell you about it.  There's certainly enough else going on here that I can write about.  I needed to say this to you once:  I am not a nature fan.  I appreciate the beauty but not this time around.  It did too much damage for me to love spring flowers.

Rikuzentakata, again

We needed to go meet with a city hall official in Rikuzentakata today.  We went to City Hall, or rather, the temporary City Hall which is essentially four long trailers made into offices.  The original City Hall is damaged beyond repair.

As we were driving back towards our current base in Ofunato, we drove through what remains of Rikuzentakata.  Again.  I looked out the window to my left and sat it:  Kenritsu Rikuzentakata Byoin.  The main hospital in Rikuzentakata.  It's a four-story structure, white on the outside, rectangular.  It looks like a typical hospital.  There's nothing special about this hospital except that all the windows on the first three floors are blown out.  This is the hospital where the doctors, nurses and able-bodied people ran up to the roof to escape the tsunami.  They had to leave behind those who couldn't escape in order to save themselves.  They heard those die as they fled up to the fourth floor and onto the roof. 

I can only imagine what they must have seen from the roof.  It couldn't have been that far to the rising water below.  Fear and guilt are two potent emotions to combine.  Seeing the building I had read and heard so much about brought it back all over again.  This sucks.

There are two other apartment buildings that I look at every time we go to Rikuzentakata.  These two five-story apartment buildings stand one in front of the other, the first one being closer to the ocean. All of the windows on both buildings are blown out for first four floors.  I can see through the first building to the second one behind.  This means the wave was four stories high and powerful enough to blow through windows, a hall way, another apartment on the other side of the hall way, then go into another building and wreak the same damage all over again.

It's a quiet hell.  There's no fire, burning bodies, pain, blood, screaming and devil-like creatures as I've seen in artwork in museums and books.  This is an entirely different kind of hell.  It's quiet.  There's no one around.  It's mountains of rubble everywhere I look.  Pile after pile of cars, splintered wood, and everything you can imagine inside.

Then as I we're driving, I see it.  Someone put a statue of a Buddha on the side of the road.  This came from someone's home.  Artifacts dot the roadside here and there and I'm at a loss for words all over again.

"I have a responsibility to start over"

The campground I will be moving to shortly also operates as a shelter for 120 people.  One of those staying at the shelter is a city council member.  He was instrumental in pulling strings to get us to the right people to get permission to use the campground as one of our bases.  There's a photo of Hirota Bay hanging in the main hall of one of the campground buildings.  Hirota Bay is where Rikuzentakata is located.  It's this bay that the tsunami came into and then onto Rikuzentakata.  I will find a way to take a photo from a hill so you can get a sense of the extent of the damage in Rikuzentakata.

Hirota Bay is known in Japan for its oysters.  Other areas are known for producing mass quantities of oysters but Hirota Bay provides the gourmet brand sold only in high-end restaurants and hotels in Tokyo.  The entire oyster crop was destroyed.  The city council member who I've now become friends with is also a fisherman, or rather an oyster-man.  He lost everything.  He said it will take him five years to get his first oyster harvest back.

He runs this family business with his three sons.  While all of his family members survived, he lost all of his houses and had to run up the mountain towards the campground to get to higher ground.  He, too, watched the tsunami destroy his homes, Hirota Bay, his oysters and livelihood.  I asked what the local oyster growers were going to do here on out as all of them lost their crop.  He said half would take their allotted payment from the government and retire.  "Not me," he said.  "I have a responsibility to start over.  This is a family business.  I need to have something to pass onto my sons.  They are still young.  If I can live five more years and get them their first harvest after the tsunami I've done my part."

What does one say to this?  I might worry about where my next job is coming from but I have a spouse who has a steady job.  Both of us are employable.  We can move.  The people here don't have that kind of flexibility.  Houses are gone.  Family members are dead or missing.  Livelihoods shot.  Listening to their stories tests my ability to say the right thing at the right time.  So far I have yet to stick my foot in my mouth.  I am careful to dance delicately around the subject of death and destruction as so many have lost so much.  It's not a casual question.  Offering regrets, comfort and words of kindness only go so far.  This is far more complex than I ever imagined.

Everywhere I look....

This is what I see everyday.  Note the boat.  This is over half a mile inland.  It just breaks my heart.  I didn't let anyone see me take this photo.  I meant what I said when I wrote I won't capitalize on their pain.

"You don't get to cry"

Evidently I'm human.  Evidently I can't go a whole week shutting out my emotions and being strictly professional.  Evidently, all this comes at a price.

If I may digress (already?) just for a moment.  The volunteers here are going to be split into two groups.  One will work in Ofunato and the other in Rikuzentakata.  At the risk of repeating myself, Rikuzentakata essentially doesn't exist anymore.  Ofunato still has vibrant business and residential districts that remain.  Both are port cities and Ofunato's port was destroyed. 

The teams will do different things in the towns.  As Rikuzentakata has so much more need the scale of the assignments will be larger.  The middle school and high school have been shut down there.  One of our proposals is to get into the high school to clean out the entire first floor so kids can go back to school.  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So, we were at our new "base camp" (a campground) in Rikuzentakata yesterday talking things over with the city council member (whose house was destroyed so is now living at the campground which is also operating as a shelter) and the manager of the campground.  At the end of our discussion, the camp manager said he wanted to show us something.  We drove up to a perch, a lookout of sorts and got out.  He asked us a climb up a small hill to another overlook.  From here, we could see across the bay into Rikuzentakata.  Let me explain.  The campground is on a peninsula between Ofunato and Rikuzentakata.  Ofunato is north of Rikuzentakata and is a larger town.  The peninsula was cut off and made into an island when the tsunami hit Rikuzentakata but the Self Defense Forces built roads and a make-shift bridge to connect the peninsula (now an island) back onto the mainland.  It's from the highest point of this peninsula/island that we looked back across the bay into Rikuzentakata.

The manager said, "I stood here and watched the tsunami hit."  Just like that I felt the tears coming.  I did my "control, control" pep talk in my head but when he said, "when the water that was receding from the bay collided with the incoming tsunami, it created this wall of water that looked 50m high and I saw that crash into the town" I lost it.  I turned around and had to walk away.  I gave myself a few minutes to regain my composure and came back to repeat what he said.

As we're driving down the hill back down into the campground, the manager says, "I have a something to tell you."  The team leader asks what it is and the manager says, "you don't get to cry."  He then went onto to explain the people there don't have "room" to deal with their emotions and for us (he meant me, of course) to lose it is not okay.  Touche.  Note to self:  go back to "control, control" and this time make it stick.  I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work but I've been given a specific task, at least in front of those at this shelter.  No tears.  They watched a wave the size of a building wash out their town in six minutes.  They're still missing over 1,000 people and a tenth of their population is either dead or missing.  For their pain, I get to control my emotions.  My to do list just got longer.

Volunteers galore

We went to a shelter today to make a spaghetti meal for those who live there.  We made sure to get strawberries and ice cream (what little ice cream we could find in the stores).  It was beautiful standing inside the kitchen and watching people scarf down pasta, salad and a dessert.  Slicing ten pounds of onions was a pain but it was well worth it.  Side note here......I was hoping the onions would make me cry and then I could bawl my eyes out and blame it on the onions......nothing.  I think this is the absolute first time in my life I've sliced into an onion without shedding a tear.  It's not a "Japanese onion" thing either as two nights ago I managed to get a good cry in when slicing the same type of onion bought at the same store.  Go figure.

There are families in this shelter with kids.  I've seen young women volunteering here for the past several days (all volunteers have a duct tape sticker on their arm) and I saw them today and yesterday running around with the children.  People are pitching in all over.  High school students whose schools were damaged do whatever they can.  A young Japanese man who was living in Canada came back here (he's from here) the day after the earthquake and also volunteers with City Hall as well as All Hands.  There's just no hesitation whatsoever.  People are helping.  Everywhere.  That we can cook a meal for them every now and then is a no brainer.  That I didn't cry at all after cutting up 10 pounds of onions?  Serious "brainer".......sorry.  Couldn't resist.  I have to make these little jokes here and there.  There's not a lot of laughter around these days, for obvious reasons.

Devastation first hand

If you know me you know I am not a woman of few words.  If you know me well you know I like to talk.  I have opinions and am not shy about sharing them.  This is important why?  I'm glad you asked.  I took the bus up north and was met by the leader of the volunteer group at the train station/bus stop.  He drove us through Rikuzentakata to get to Ohfunato where the base is. 

I am officially at a loss for words.  I first started seeing the debris up the river 9 miles away from the coast along the riverbeds.  The closer we got into town, the more we saw. 

I've never seen anything like this.  The whole downtown area near the ocean was flattened.  There were gouge marks on the side of one of the few remaining buildings where the water carried the debris 20+ feet high. 

Cars, buses, trucks, large equipment and such were tossed around, upside down, dented and destroyed.  Few buildings remain standing and those that are were hollowed out by the water.  I could see right through them through the curtains that some how stayed behind and were flapping in the wind.  Teddy bears, twisted metal beams, roof tiles, trees, telephone poles, clothing, bicycles and stop lights, you name it, it was strewn all over. 

I have nothing to compare it to other than a quiet hell. 

Then there were the crews.  Men were out shoveling dirt off the side walks that had been cleared by earlier cleaning crews.  The sidewalks had then been swept.  Except for the destroyed buildings on both sides of the street you'd never known just a day ago massive amounts of junk cluttered those same sidewalks.

Things that were washed out from inside buildings had already been sorted.  Appliances were in one area, books in another, wooden beams somewhere else, tatami mats stacked up neatly and placed on the sidewalks.  There is so much order here.  Seeing the devastation is one thing, seeing the patience and care by which this clean up process has already begun is yet another experience altogether.

I guess I'm find words after all.  I will keep sharing my thoughts, observations and feelings. 

Friends of friends

You'll all learn as you read my postings that I really think adding a bit of spice to stories is a great way to keep life interesting.  It also keeps the attention of those to whom I'm telling the story.  In other words, I have a tendency to exaggerate.  Sometimes.  Just a bit.

What I'm about to share with you contains no exaggeration, embellishing, modifying or spicing up.  This is the real deal.  I have a healthy imagination and use it often but this one would be difficult for me to make up.

Let me back up just a bit.  Before the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan earlier this month, I had two business trips planned.  One was to Dubai and another was to Tokyo.  Once I decided to make myself available to go to Japan and got put on multiple standby lists I called both clients and canceled these trips. 

Now, I knew when I bought the tickets these were non-refundable tickets.  I knew if I had to cancel the flights for any reason, I had to eat a $250 (per ticket) change fee.  The tickets were both on United Airlines.   I decided to call United and beg for mercy.  If I'm going to Japan for two months and giving up salary, family, friends and make up then United can eat several thousand dollars.  This was my argument.  I would say it nicely, of course. 

I put out a mass e-mail to anyone who might have contacts at United.  I knew after the first call to United they were sympathetic and supportive but "sorry, we can't change our policy" was what I would continue to hear.  I needed to talk to someone who would actually take on my situation personally.  I needed friends to hit up their friends for a contact at United.

This is where it gets interesting.  I get a call on my cell phone from a number I don't recognize and take it because, well, after I've told people I'm going to Japan I've been getting calls from all over the place.  I take the call and hear this "Hi!" and proceed to "meet" Amy from Washington who's best friend works at United.  Of course she does.  We end the call with "I'll put you in touch with her!"  We exchange e-mails and next thing you know Lili from United is on board.  I'm still a bit confused as to who Amy is and how she found me but I let it go.  These kinds of things have been happening the last several days and I'm just trying to be grateful for the support I'm getting and not necessarily ask delving questions as to who they are.

I'm sharing this story with Miki saying I'm so totally impressed and touched and truly humbled by the support people are showing me and she stops me and says,
"Amy is Jo's friend."  I pause for a minute and say
"Okay, sweetheart.  This means nothing to me." 
"Amy is my Frontierville neighbor.  From Facebook.  Jo's my friend.  Amy's Jo's friend. Lili, the one helping you, is Amy's friend. I don't know Lili and the only reason I know Amy is through Frontierville.  We both needed neighbors and so we connected.  Jo must have contacted Amy after she saw my Facebook posting about you needing a contact at United."

Okay.  I'm not a woman of few words.  I like to talk.  This means I'm very seldom at a loss for words.  When Miki tells me a friend of a friend from a Facebook game got in touch with me to put me in touch with yet another friend to help me--it takes awhile to sink in.  People are good.  (Not everyone, of course.  I'll have a posting on one such person later.)

This is the kind of thing that's been happening for the past 72 hours.  People from all over are calling, writing, and sending things.  I'll write more about the list of things I've gotten and am getting sent to me.  I swear.  I can't make this up.