Project 365 – Day 347

Repairs taking place at my school. There were lots of small cracks after the earthquake.

Project 365 – Day 294

Volunteering at an English event for children who live in temporary housing

Project 365 – Day 248

COOKIES!

Present from a Brazilian NGO. I wonder who thought ‘Well, we collected all this money for Japan. What should we do with it? How about buy lots of cookies?!’.

Project 365 – Day 233 (a present from Oxfam)

A radio!

A torch radio!

A wind-up torch radio (perfect for disasters!)

A solar and wind-up torch radio! (even better!)

A solar and wind-up torch radio AND phone charger!

After the quake many people realised that foreigners had almost no way of finding out information such as which shops would be open for food and where to buy gas. I’d been thinking about buying one of these wind-up radios but I didn’t know how useful it would be since I don’t speak Japanese. Luckily for me, Oxfam Japan donated one of these radios to every foreign person in Sendai. It also came with a handy dandy sheet from the Sendai International Centre:

Radio Stations for non-Japanese speakers

Project 365 – Day 232

My quake shoes

These shoes were actually my indoor shoes for school but I’ll always remember them as the shoes I was wearing when the quake hit. I remember actually feeling worried that I had to run outside onto the games field with my indoor shoes on! Funny the things you think about! I wore the shoes today to meet my friends for a Korean lunch.

Project 365 – Day 226

Messages of support for Japan at Sendai International Centre

A lot of the messages are written in English, even those from Japanese people. The Japanese messages use certain English phrases which are common in reference to sports in Japan. For example ‘Fight!’ which my students often use when they want to say ‘Try your best’ (I am bad at English but I fight!). Another is ‘All for one, one for all’ which I’ve seen in reference to team sports but here it really explains the Japanese culture of the importance of the group above the individual. My favourite message  that I’ve seen from foreign people is the one that says ‘Keep calm and carry on’ after the famous British poster.

A thousand origami cranes

Many groups around the world have sent Senbazuru (a thousand paper cranes) to Sendai. A Japanese legend says that anyone who folds a thousand cranes will have their wish come true. The cranes are also thought to be a very powerful lucky charm and will bring long life. It is amazing that so many people are sending their wishes to Sendai. The picture above is just one set of cranes. Two have also been sent by ex-ALTs (Assistant Language Teacher -my current job) that have been given to some of the schools that had their buildings destroyed in the tsunami.

Weekword – Catharsis

This is my first time taking part in Weekword and  Emma over at The Gift Shed
has chosen a great word: Catharsis. You can look at her post to see her take on the word as well as the other bloggers joining in.

As soon as I read Emma’s post I knew what I was going to pick. Catharsis means ‘cleansing’ or ‘purging’. It has also been referred to as ‘renewal’ or ‘restoration’. I recently volunteered at a refuge centre in Sendai (formally a tennis club). I helped at an event for the people living there and the volunteers put together many  different stalls including food, music, massage, art, and many more. I helped in a section for the children: playing games and doing crafts with kids who had lost everything in the earthquake and the tsunami that followed. While the physical damage of the disaster is obvious it is the internal and emotional damage that is most worrying. It was a beautiful sunny day and as I laughed and smiled with the children I felt hopeful that we were starting to mend some of that damage.

Catharsis

Japan Update

I am now back in Sendai and back at work. We are still getting small aftershocks but nothing big hopefully. There is now no danger of radiation from the air. The Japanese government are enforcing very strong checks on food and drinks so that is also safe. After talking with my Mum and Dad, I’ve decided I’m going to give everything a reasonable amount of time to settle down (i.e. months rather than weeks) before considering going back to the UK. Before the quake my job was to provide a native English speaking example to my students, now my role is simply to make them smile. If I can brighten my students’ days with stupid jokes and English games then I feel like I am doing something useful here.

Project 365 – Day 196

Look what's in the shops again!

Milk and yoghurt are back!! This brand is from Hokkaido in the very North of Japan (close to Russia).

Project 365 – Day 184

My desk

After taking the night bus from Tokyo I arrived in Sendai at 5.30am. I got a taxi to my place and then it was time to get ready for school. I really wanted to sleep but today was health checks at school so I had to go. It is the law that all teachers in Japan must have a chest x-ray once a year to check for TB. Fun times! For my first day back I spent a lot of time tidying up my desk. I also took this picture of my desk to demonstrate the small space I squeezed into during the quake.