Tohoku Twice

I finally finished reflecting on my second trip to Tohoku. The events in this blog are from July 14-26. Sorry its out of order!


I spent the night before Fuji at my friend Yoshiaki’s apartment. Yoshiaki had moved since I visited last. I arrived at Kamiyacho station with my backpacker’s backpack on, looking completely like a tourist. A Japanese person in the station asked me if I was going to see Tokyo Tower. I thought to myself, “Just because I have a backpack doesn’t mean I am the stereotypical Tokyo tourist going to see Tokyo Tower!” I smiled at the man and I proudly responded, “NO! I’m going to climb Mt. Fuji.” When I walked out of the station, Tokyo Tower nearly smacked me in the face…and I realized how ridiculous I sounded, hours away from Mount Fuji, insisting that I was NOT going to see Tokyo Tower. The following morning, I picked up my cousin Sarah from Haneda International Airport, picked up her friend Ed in Shinjuku Station, and set off to conquer Fuji. We spent the two days after Fuji running around Tokyo with my Japanese friends, hitting all the main sightseeing spots and local hangouts; the Asahi beer building (which is shaped like a giant mug of beer), the great golden poop (if you want to know, you’ll have to come to Japan), the Edo Tokyo Museum, Imperial Palace, Asakusa, and a maid café in Akihabara. We had an amazing time both days. We had a 4.0 quake our first night in Tokyo, which we would fond to be only a precursor to the quakes we would experience in the week to come.



A few tears made their way down my cheek as I gazed at Minato Elementary School out of the car window. I could hardly believe that this was the same place I brought relief supplies to in March, less than 2 weeks after the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. The cars wrapped around telephone phones like fabric, knee high mud and water, endless rubble, and the assortment of rotting fish scattered about were no where to be seen. I cried for the progress made.

I also cried for the progress yet to be made. A closer look revealed the still visible water line on second floor of the buildings. Although the rubble had been removed from the street and sidewalks, many of the buildings were still completely destroyed and unusable. Along with the people and things most dear to them, those in Tohoku lost all sense of normalcy and security to the flood of water that overtook their land on March 11th. The initial quake has been followed by weekly aftershocks that shake hearts as much as they shake buildings. The majority of the people in Tohoku have PTSD, and every little shake makes them fear; fear that the building will collapse, fear that the ocean will once again surge towards them, fear that March 11th will happen again. I cried because it is the hearts of those in Tohoku that are in need of restoration, and this restoration will not take place with shovels and tractors.

I had the opportunity to spend a week with my cousin Sarah, and our friends Alea and Ed from San Diego, volunteering in Sendai and Ishinomaki. We stayed at a summer camp in the mountains that had been converted into CRASH’s (Christian Relief and Service + Hope) Sendai Base. Each day we would travel to a different work site, along with Wataru. Wataru is a 24 year old seminary student who was interning at CRASH during the summer. The week before we arrived, he confided to those at the base that although he was in training to be a pastor, he didn’t really like people, and that he had been having a hard time with his classmates at school. He was a bit quiet the first day, but by the second day we had given him a nickname, “ManJack,” and completely broken him out of his shell. The five of us and ManJack became a close knit team almost immediately, despite the language barrier, much thanks to the crazy spunkiness of Sarah, Alea and Ed. Each day we would head out to a work site with ManJack and some of the other teams at the Sendai base from around Japan, Singapore, and the US. ManJack would faithfully pack a lunch and water for each of us, even though it was each of our responsibility to pack our own. Each day was packed full of conversation, laughter, and craziness, along with a solemn respect and love for those in Tohoku. I’ve talked to those at the base after we left, and they have said that ManJack has been a different person since the San Diego team left. What we were able to do in Tohoku in that brief amount of time was very limited, but at least we were able to love on someone who is going to be a future leader in the Japanese church. ManJack is an amazing person, and I am very thankful we got to be a part of letting him know its ok for him to be himself, it all of its amazing craziness.

ManJack wasn’t the only one who was given a nickname. For example, the night Alea arrived at the base, Ed had cut all of the grass along the side of the road to camp with a weed-whacker. Although we were high in the mountains, when Alea drove in she asked if all of the cut grass was damage from the TSUNAMI!!! From then on, one of Ed’s new nick names was Ed-nami. After each day of work, all of the teams would come back to the base and have a time of debriefing before dinner. I had the opportunity to translate for these sessions, which was the perfect opportunity for me to reinforce everyone’s nicknames. When someone would say “Wataru blah blah blah,” I would translate “ManJack blah blah blah.” At one of these meetings, there was a young man sitting silent in the back corner of the room, almost like Aaragorn in the Prancing Pony, long hair and all. Our team shared in the debriefing that we had removed all of the rubble from a field that day. However, there was an enormous tree in the middle of the field that had been washed over from the coastline, which was about 2 miles away, preventing the field from being tilled and planted. The mysterious man in the corner, whose name was Sou, said, “Hey, I have a chainsaw.” The comment instantly became a nickname, and whenever someone would say “Sou blah blah blah,” I translated it “Chainsaw blah blah blah.”

It was with these crazy people that we worked on Mr. Ouchi’s farm in Wakabayashi, took the water damaged dry wall out of a house in Tona, and organized a donation warehouse and played with kids living in the temporary housing in Ishinomaki.
Mr. Ouchi is a farmer, and lives on a large plot of land close to the ocean. His family has been farming as far back as they can trace their history. As soon as we walked onto the property, Sarah and I both had the feeling that we were back home on our grandfather’s farm. I am sure my grandfather and Mr. Ouchi would have been friends. I could imagine my grandfather there, standing next to Mr. Ouchi in his green John Dear jumper, taking in the ocean air, soil and potting tools in hand. Sarah and my trip was in memory of my grandfather and the part of his life he spent in Japan, so it was fitting that our first day of volunteer work would be on a farm, the place closest to my grandfather’s heart.

Mr. Ouchi is part of the firefighter’s emergency response team, and spent the few minutes between the earthquake and tsunami running from door to door, telling all of his neighbors to get upstarts. His daughters attend the junior high school that is visible from the front porch. In complete compliance with the incredibly idiotic evacuation procedures that the Japanese school system enforces, all the students evacuated to the gymnasium following the earthquake. When they found out there was a tsunami coming, they all fled upstairs, barely making it to the third story as the raging water hit the building. Mr. Ouchi made it to the second story of his house in time, but didn’t have time to grab the family dog, Rui, as the waters rose. Luckily, Mr. Ouchi was able to grab Rui from the balcony as he floated by. Although Rui escaped with his life, he has a really bad case of PTSD. The cute shiba-inu whines for you to come pet him, but as soon as you get close, he gets scared and starts to snap. After the waters receded, Mr. Ouchi worked with the firefighters to recover bodies. Like Rui, Mr. Ouchi was also effected by what he experienced. When CRASH started working with Mr. Ouchi, he was very depressed. However, as hundreds of volunteers from all over Japan and the world came to his home month after month to work on his home and his fields, he began to regain hope. Alea, who has been working at the Sendai base all summer, said that Mr. Ouchi has been beginning to experience grace. He has been asking “Who am I, that I should be the one receiving all this help? What have I done, that people would fly from across the world to help me?” This is the same question asked by every Christian who experiences grace; completely unearned love and favor. “Who am I, that God should love me? What have I done, that Jesus would die for me?” We know that the human heart cannot be restored with a shovel, but as Mr. Ouchi has shown, hearts can be restored by grace and love, wielded by those who carry the shovel.

Sarah and I spent one day in Tona, working on the home of the Watanabe family. Mrs. Watanabe passed away in the tsunami. All of the houses left standing after the tsunami need to have the drywall and floorboards removed and replaced, and all of the mud and rubble taken out from under the house. Eighteen of us from Japan, American and Singapore worked all day on the Watanabe house to remove the drywall from the first floor and the weeds from the yard. Eighteen people, in one whole day, were only able to tackle the drywall and weeks from a single house. The road to recovery is long, and will be tread very slowly.　

That night back at the base we met a lady named Judy, who is the head of the Dallas/Sendai sister city association. The Dallas Sister City Association gave a large amount of funding to build something in Sendai. Judy informed us that unlike the area north of Sendai that was completely devastated by the tsunami, only 5% of Sendai was effected by the Tsunami. She explained that Sendai’s biggest need at the moment is tourism, because Tohoku’s economy has been devastated, so there is a need for money to flow in from outside the region. Judy’s idea was to use the funding to make a community center with a foot bath and a 55 inch flat screen TV. Sarah quickly let her know that she was dreaming too small, and sold her the idea of building an outdoor amphitheatre that could be used for theater and music, drawing crowds to bring back tourism. Sarah also pitched the idea of having a benefit concert in SoCal to raise funding to throw a bigger benefit concert in Sendai next March, one year from the tragedy. As Sarah was brainstorming all of her perfecting fitting ideas, Judy said something about Tohoku (the region of Northeastern Japan hit by the tsunami). Sarah looked at her and asked, “What’s Tohoku?” !!! All of Sarah’s suggested plans are currently in motion. It was amazing to watch God use someone with little to no knowledge of Japan as such a powerful tool of healing in this country.

There are three famous views in Japan; the Miyajima Shrine in Hiroshima, the Amanohashidate bridge in Kyoto, and the coastline of Matsushima in...in where? I had heard of Matsushima many times, but I never knew where it was located. The Japanese team we worked together with one day decided to take us to an onesn (bath house style hot spring) on our way back to the base. When we pulled off of the highway, I saw a sign, “Welcome to Matsushima.” MATSUSHIMA!!!! This seems to be a common occurrence in my life. I sign up to volunteer somewhere, and end up spending time in the most beautiful places in the world. The Dead Sea, Petra, London, and now Matsushima. God sure does know how to take care of his children! A few days later, we decided to go back to Matsushima and relax our sore muscles. Sarah, Alea, and I jumped into the hot pools of water and gazed out the window at the amazing view of the ocean, dotted with islands. When we walked back into the changing room, there were four older women in the room also. One of them, a rather tall Japanese woman, maybe in her late 60’s, was weighing herself on the scale. The scale read 15 kilograms (33 lbs.). She said to her friends in Japanese, “I think this scale is broken!!! It’s saying I only weighing 15 kilos!!!” I smiled at her and chimed in “It’s not broken! You’re just skinny!!!” All of the women laughed and started talking to me, asking why my two white friends and I were at Matsushima. When I told them we were there to do volunteer work, they began to tell us their stories. All four of them were neighbors, and barely escaped the tsunami alive. When the warning was sounded, they jumped into their cars and drove as fast as they could away from the shore. They couldn’t drive fast enough. The tsunami overtook their cars, but they were able to survive by breaking out the window, climbing onto the roof of the now floating car, climbing onto a building, and later getting picked up by a helicopter. Three of the ladies are living in different temporary housing complexes, and one of them is still living at an evacuation center in an elementary school. They came to Matsushima in order to be together, and try to soak the stress of their current life away in the therapeutic waters. However, they told me that they couldn’t relax at Matsushima. The onsen overlooks the ocean, and just looking at the ocean brings back fear, and memories of the tsunami. They were afraid that one of the daily quakes would make the ocean surge beyond its borders, reaching up to swallow them. The four Japanese ladies, Sarah, Alea and I stood in a circle in the center of the changing room for quite some time, hearing their stories and encouraging them as best we could. I had this strong impression that I needed to pray for these ladies. I told them that we were Christians, and asked them if it would be alright if we prayed for them. We all bowed our heads, and I prayed for blessing on these women in Jesus’ name, that they would find comfort and release from fear, that they would find time to be together as friends, that they would soon be able to move to a more stable location, and that they would know how deeply they are loved by God, in the midst of their sufferings. Alea peaked while I was praying, and said that one of the ladies kept looking up and smiling. When we raised our heads and opened our eyes, it felt as if a weight had been lifted from the room. I looked across our little huddle to see all four of the women smiling, and looking quite a bit more settled than they had a few minutes before. They thanked us profusely and walked away bowing, smiling, and looking back over their shoulders at us. Although CRASH coordinated a lot of incredible volunteer work for us to do, it was this meeting, coordinated by God himself, that left the strongest impression on me.

Sunday’s and Monday’s are days of rest at CRASH, so we headed to Alea’s apartment. Our original plan was to sightsee, but the 101 degree fever I had changed our plans to sleeping, watching movies, and letting our bodies recover. When we arrived at Alea’s, she told us that her apartment was pretty flimsy, so if we had any decent sized quakes it was going to feel like we were on a boat in stormy seas. That night we were in the center of a 6.0 quake. The flimsy apartment started shaking violently as the power poles outside swayed about 40 degrees back and forth. I sat up calmly, and started doing a Lonely Island impression, throwing my hand down in traditional rap style and singing, “I’m on a boat!!!” Sarah and Alea sat up and joined in, “I’m on a boat!” The building stopped shaking, and the three of us laid back down and went right back to sleep, proving that none of us have PSTD, and a reminding me of how valuable it is for those of us who have not experienced the trauma of March 11th to spend time with those in Tohoku. I would have liked to stay, but Sarah had a flight to catch from Haneda International to take her to Costa Rica for a friend’s wedding, and I had to go back to work in Yokkaichi. I spent the bus ride back to Tokyo praying for those we met and dreaming of the day when I will return to Tohoku, hopefully to try a fresh vegetable from Mr. Ouchi’s farm.