February 25

Snow!
More pictures forthcoming when the folks who took pictures today load them up on Facebook.

Since a whole bunch of snow had gotten dumped on Kamaishi, we drove in today unsure of whether we'd have jobs to do, but it was actually a pretty full day.

In the morning, we cleaned rubble out of a person's home.
There was a lot of belongings in every room, so it was a pretty labor-intensive job. We didn't get done, and I'm not sure if we would have finished even if we could have worked the afternoon as well.

I spent all my time in one room, stuffing smaller objects into bags, while Kato-san spent half of his time stuffing bags and the other half getting large things, like mirror stands and dressers and such, out into the hall so somebody else could carry those downstairs.

So I was in the same room the whole time, and maybe it was because I haven't done a clean-up job in a few weeks or because I haven't spent my time in just a bedroom for a while, but I started to develop an unsettlingly specific image of the owner of the bedroom.

You understand very quickly whether it's a man or woman's room, just because of the items of clothing around, but sometimes details start popping out at you.
A notebook labeled "diet book." A box labeled with a girl's name. Some kind of instrument in a case. A medal from a high school running competition. Music CDs of outdated teenage idols. Too many purses, and jars of some kind of junk, maybe cosmetics or beads or something. A music box that still plays when it opens. Letters from friends in big bubbly handwriting.

And mixed in with some really girlish items, like a plastic Sailor Moon, women's items, like lighters and menstrual pads. The bedroom of an adult child.

All of these things, except the photographs and the important certificates and the medal, get stuffed into bags to be hauled to the dump because they were soaked by the tsunami water. We, the volunteers, were the ones in there stuffing the bags.

I am 26 and a woman, with a room like that at my family home. Kato-san has two daughters.

In the afternoon, we got switched over to more urgent jobs: shoveling snow for little old lady residents. Two little old ladies, or their relatives, put in requests to have the road or little path in front of their houses shoveled.

The first little old lady was someone I'd never seen before . I didn't talk to her directly but I heard a shouted bit of conversation (Kato-san, later: "She can't hear very well.") saying she'd like to pay us. :D Grandma, we're volunteers. You can't pay us. But thank you. <3

The second little old lady had put in a request before for snow shoveling. Before, she had stuffed us with delicious treats and coffee. This time, she stuffed us with delicious treats and tea. It was wonderful.

We had a snowball fight at the volunteer center, and then made our way for home.