Culture Day Thursday

I suppose if I am going to make an English blog for HANDS and take the time to update more often--out of having nothing better to do, and probably the need to write some of these thoughts down—I might as well tell you what we did for volunteering once in a while.

Yesterday we went to Kamaishi, as per usual. More people than probably is normal for a Thursday because it’s a national holiday: Culture Day! What does one do on Culture Day? Absolutely no idea. Like every one of those random holidays that hangs around in the middle of the workweek, I think one usually either does something fun in the area, like go to an onsen or watch a movie, or sits in a corner of the living room vegetating. Anyway, and some people volunteer too.

Because of the large number of people (maybe around 30 in total) we were split up into a couple of worksites. One group finished up cleaning a house with a big water gun, and there was possibly another group doing things unknown, but my group was tasked with removing the tsunami mud out of a person’s backyard.

When we arrived at the worksite, we found the tsunami mud was not just any tsunami mud, but tsunami mud that had been mixed with gravel, and the resulting mixture had been pushed all over the place. Meaning: you can’t tell where the tsunami mud ends and the gravel begins, and you can’t tell how deep you are supposed to dig. The information sheet summarizing the job said essentially, “Owner will not be on site, and will leave the depth up to you. Err on the side of digging deeply.”

Often, the person making the volunteer request is on site, so we can ask them specific questions about how deep to dig, what to throw away, whether they need help with anything else, etcetera. However, like today, they have every right not to be there, just to use up an entire day watching us work, or working alongside us and bowing at us and having to say “thank you.” They have their regular lives to live.

Anyway, we found ourselves faced with a whole backyard of gravel mixed with tsunami mud that had hardened in places and was mixed with large unpleasant rocks. Unlike cleaning up the floor of a house, or concrete, there was no clear “end” or “bottom” to the mud that you could hit and say “Aha! This is the bottom! I will dig down to here, and no further!” You could conceivably dig very, very very far down. It was a dangerous, potential “dig a hole to China” situation.

It took a lot of scraping, and some unpleasant shoveling (gravel is not easy), and throwing gravel into bags, and throwing the bags into trucks, and some sweating, but we did finish the job by just about 2:45. Tools washed and returned, ate ice cream in Toono, took a bath at home and ready to order a pizza and have a glass of wine. Good day’s work.