So this past weekend (Oct 27-29th, 2012), I had a great opportunity to go up to Minamisanriku in Tohoku where the Tsunami and Earthquake hit since March 11th of 2011. It was a 7 hours drive up north from Tokyo! However, it was such an amazing experience because the international students from my Japanese School and I got the chance to do some volunteer work as well as talk to victims. One of the victims, she is Filipino and married to a Japanese. Her name is Amelia. It was nice to talk to her and see that she is in such great spirit. It really breaks my heart to know what people have lost, yet they have managed to stay so strong. She told us about the restaurant her husband spent years building and establishing. It's so sad to know such long hard work was washed away in seconds. Their home/restaurant was located right in between two rivers and the sea. And so it had water gushing in all three directions. However, now her husband is trying again to rebuild his restaurant and already has a little business started. Amelia, as a coordinator from the disaster, also said that there were elderly people who just gave up at trying to rebuild their lives. This is a very sad case. Japan is still slowly recovering and we all as well must help encourage them. We also got the opportunity to talk to Junior leaders. These Junior leaders are young people. There was 5 of them and most of them were in their 1st year of high school. It was very assuring to learn that these young folks still want to stay and rebuild their town in the future instead of moving away from such disasters like the tsunami. One of them wants to start a restaurant for his community in the future and hopes to draw in many people. Because of high hopes like this from many youngsters in the Minamisariku area, I really want to visit Japan again to see how much Tohoku Minamisanriku will grow. The last thing we did on our trip was visiting a Buddhist temple. That was an evacuation center for many people when the tsunami hit. Also, the monks help a lot with many anxiety that people go through. Check the photos of the trip down below. ;)
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| The Junior leaders showing their brainstorming ideas. |
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| Group photo |
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| The Buddhist Temple |
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Photo with the two monks. (The one in thick glasses is a monk too)
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Only the foundations of what's left of the houses in Minamisanriku.
Our job was to dig to the bottom of the side of the foundation so bulldozers can scoop the dirt more easily |
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| Group photo of the girls after our volunteer work |
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