On Saturday, we removed the belongings from the second floor of a woman's house. Strangely enough, the first floor wasn't completely clean, but we were told that was OK because the house was going to be torn down. What needed to go was larger things in the second and third floor.
I've never heard of that before this job, but that was the explanation that was given.
We didn't touch the third floor, possibly because the cleanup was going to happen one floor at a time, or maybe because the third floor was unstable. We were told to borrow helmets, which doesn't bode well for the overall health of the ceiling.
The second floor was covered in things--clothing, futons, tatami mats, paper, books, tsunami mud. Everything was wet, and had been wet for a very long time by now. There were plastic tubs filled with clothing that had been sitting in water for 8 months or so. Frankly, it stunk. I guess if you leave lots of things to rot for long enough, they start to stink, even fabric. We drained the tubs and carried them down the stairs. The clothing and such, we stuffed into bags and threw out the second floor window. Then the usual--drive the truck to the dump site, dump the rubble, drive back. We had to throw everything into piles at the dump site by hand because the volunteer center didn't have enough dump trucks to lend out. (Maybe there was another dump-truck heavy job going on that day?)
The owner of the house, a little old lady, filled her purse with canned coffees from a nearby vending machine and gave them to us during breaktime. She was happy to have found a notebook with money slipped into the pages--really old Japanese money, 10 yen and 100 yen notes. "I've been looking for this," she said, smiling.
I learned how to tie a knot called a "nanking musubi," English name unknown, which allows you to tie down stuff in the back of the truck securely while still unraveling quickly when you need it to. We'll see if I can still remember how to tie it next weekend?
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