Adventures Up North

Alright...so it's been awhile, a long while, since my last post. Sorry about that...but let's get right into it shall we?

My winter break started with a trip, along with my host mother and two Rotarians, to the Tohoku (Northeast) region of Japan, more specifically the Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. For those of you not too familiar with Japan, the Tohoku region is famous for its hot springs, old temples, fishing industry, and giant earthquake and tsunami disaster two years ago that resulted in thousands of deaths, and mass destruction, including the meltdown of a nuclear reactor plant, effects of which are still being felt in the region today. Well, not to be dramatic or anything...

I'll start off on a lighter note, though, which is that to get there, I got to ride on my first shinkansen! I was really cool- the outside was so sleek and shiny, and the pointed head made it look so futuristic.

The inside looked pretty much like any other long-distance travel train (I think, I haven't been in too many of those). I got to sit by the window, and it was so nice to watch the outside scenery flying by! I think my host mom said we were going about 300 km per hour? I saw some beautiful snow capped mountain ranges, but unfortunately no pictures...I only managed to stay awake for about a half hour, though, before passing out like I usually do.
We arrived at Ichinoseki (Iwate prefecture) to a nice cool 30 degrees. It reminded me of home! I even saw snow for the first time since last winter. One of the Rotarians, Koike-san, was originally from the area, so we met up with her brother, who ended up chauffeuring us around for the first day.
On the way to our first destination, we stopped by this refugee house that had been built by another Rotary club (I think, but I did see this house at some later point on TV, so it is possible that it is of much greater significance than I could understand) right after the disaster occured.

One of the Rotarians (turns out he was my club's president-who knew?) and I decided to take the climb to the top (through the use of rather steep stairs and ladders), and were greeted by this view from the top:

I had been told that, due to the proximity to the ocean (which you can see in the top left corner), this area had been devastated during the disaster, so at first I was a little let-down (yes, I realize that this was extremely insensitive of me), by the utter normality of the landscape. Where was the torn landscape, the piles of rubble that I associated with the aftermath of an earthquake and tsunami?
But my attitude quickly changed when Inoue-san, the Rotarian I was traveling with, pointed to the ocean on the horizon and said, "You couldn't see that before the tsunami hit."
That's when I realized the nature of my ignorance. I had only been paying attention to the earthquake, and, due to my lack of knowledge about tsunamis, and not even thought about the kind of damage they could cause. While the earthquake may have toppled the houses in this thriving coastal village, the tsunami swept everything it touched, houses and all, into the sea, leaving behind this barren, country landscape.
There was, of course, still piles of rubble and dirt left behind, but seeing as it had already been more than a year since the disaster they had long since been cleared away, although clean-up workers are still not sure what to do with a majority of it, so it's still pretty easy to find huge piles of rubble waiting in secluded areas of affected towns.

Like so

I forgot to mention earlier that one of the main reasons Rotary invited me along on this trip was so that I could witness the aftermath and, on their orders, take as many pictures as possible (which I was planning to do anyway). The point being that once I returned to that US I would make their case to my Rotary in hopes of their contributing to the relief effort (and I hope they are not the only ones*). I agreed that pictures are a good way of convincing people to help, but what I really wanted was a picture of something more shocking, that I wouldn't need to explain in order to make my point.
I found what I was looking for as we approached the coast.

The structures of the buildings above and under this were too strong to be swept away, but the tsunami accounted for everything else of the inside, leaving behind these empty shells.

This used to be a supermarket

This apartment building gives you a pretty good idea of how tall the tsunami was: only the first four floors were damaged.

We drove around the area for a bit, me asking the driver to stop everytime I wanted to take a close-up picture of something (I'm afraid I annoyed everyone else somewhat with this), and finally we came upon this:

This big guy was washed in from the port, like many boats from that time, and has remained sitting on the side of the road ever since. 

And just to prove how big this thing was, here it is compared to me

Although the tour of the physical aftermath was more than enough for me to start planning in my head my speech for my Rotary when I return, it wasn't my club's main reason for our trip up north. The Tokyo Kanda Rotary had actually been sponsoring an orphanage in the town of Kesennuma (close to where we had just been touring), for children that lost their parents in the earthquake/tsunami. We were to visit the orphanage for their Christmas performance, and present them with presents from the club. I was hoping that we would be able to spend some time at the orphanage, doing volunteer work or something of the sort, but unfortunately they had nothing of the sort planned. The show itself, however, was quite adorable.

It started off pretty traditional- with a short sermon by the head of the orphanage, accompanied by the six cutest acolytes I've ever seen (although, I admit, I haven't seen a whole lot of acolytes in my life)

It was followed by this band performing some popular anime songs (not very Christmas-y, I'll admit)

Though this little guy singing Doraemon was definitely a show-stealer

He did, though, have some competition from this guy, who was playing the hammiest kappa (Japanese water god) I've ever seen, in a skit that involved three fishermen and some village girls rescuing a princess from him, although in the end it was the ninja bodyguard that did all the work.

The rugby club followed them with a performance of a traditional Kiwi rugby dance. Or, for people like me, the one from Invictus.

These guys finished off the show, and I will say that that one girl in the middle (who is well on her way to becoming Japan's next superstar) stole the attention from every single one of the boys in that group.

 At some point in the middle of all of these, Koike-san went up on stage to make a speech about Rotary, and I handed out presents to these two little boys chosen to represent the entire orphanage- the rest would be given out privately. After the show ended, our group had a meeting with one of the orphanage directors, and then we were on our way. I was kind of disappointed that we couldn't spend more time there, but maybe another time!

But my trip was not finished there!
The next day Koike-san decided to take me and my host mom for some sightseeing around the area. She hired a driver who had considerate knowledge of the area, and he even had some English pamphlets about the different places we went for me to look at.
Our first stop was a glass-blowing factory in Ichinoseki. Now, having spent many of my days in Celo, I was no stranger to the art of glass-blowing, but I will admit that the results never cease to impress me.

The two guys in the workshop at the time seemed to specialize in making these little guys

 I probably would have taken a picture of every single creation in there, all of them equally amazing, if I hadn't been reminded of our driver waiting for me.
On the way to our next destination, our driver stopped for a minute to let us Tokyo-ites to experience the beauty of snow. And while none of us, with all of having lived in the north for part, or all, in my case, of their lives, were new to snow, it was easy to appreciate it's beauty just the same.

I mean, how can you not love the look of freshly-fallen snow in the midst of nature?

From there we moved on to the real attraction of the region: a series of historically-significant temples and shrines.

The first was Takkoku no Iwaya Bishamondo Hall, an ancient temple built (to state the obvious) into the side of a cliff- for protection purposes I believe. Due to the sacred statues on the inside, I couldn't take any pictures, but there are places on the inside where cliff just takes the place of wall, which definitely added to the coolness of the interior. There also used to be a giant carving of Buddha's face on the cliff next to the temples, but it was destroyed awhile ago by an earthquake. 

Next was Motsuji temple, which actually used to be a massive complex of temples and the sort, which have long since been destroyed. While the main hall has been rebuilt the main attraction of this place is still Oizumi ga Ike pond, with its garden in the center, the beautiful landscape (probably more so in the spring) around which the complex was built. Although with its island in the center and the fact that people frequently take walks around its perimeter, it reminded me much more of a Japanese version of Jamaica pond.

Although it was my first time seeing this, it's actually a common site at many big temples: the giant incense pot. You're supposed to fan the fumes over yourself for cleansing, assuming you can get close enough without choking in the ridiculously strong smell (which the Japanese seem to be immune to).

Our last stop was to the Chuson-ji temple complex close by. This was the biggest tourist attraction of the three seeing as it has achieved World Heritage-status due its main temple, Konjikido, which houses a large 3D scene of the Buddha and his followers (in three sizes, I might add), all made completely of gold (again, no pictures). As well as the mummified remains of 4 Japanese lords beneath it...

Pretty sure this is the outside of Konjikido, but then again, there were alot of temples in the area...

We ended the tour with a late lunch of the area's specialty mochi. I got a variety plate of seven different flavors, each of them equally delicious.

My favorite was the black one, which was a mixture, I believe, of flax seed and honey. But I also recommend edamame mochi (the light green one) to anyone that can find it. And yes, there was also mochi in the soup.

After that, we caught the shinkansen back home, finishing off that trip up north.

But wait, there's more?

Yes, there is! In order to keep up with the Tohoku theme of this post, I'm going to do a little time skip (don't worry I'll fill in the rest in another post) to January 2013, when I took another trip up north, this time in the company of my friend Bianka, her host father, and some members of the Tokyo YMCA.

This time it was only a day trip, and the only reason I can think of why Bianka's host dad would invite me along is the fact that I was constantly at his house for the three months that Bianka stayed with them (what can I say? It was close to my school).
The reason we were accompanied by several YMCA members is because the main purpose of our trip was volunteer work. Ohara-san (Bianka's host dad and a Rotarian) co-runs, with the head of one of Tokyo's YMCA's, a chorus that sets up sing-a-long-type events for Tohoku survivors, mainly the elderly, I believe. That day we were to join them for another sing-a-long with a group of elderly earthquake/tsunami refugees.
We got to Sendai pretty early, and caught a bus to Ishinomaki (again, in the Miyagi prefecture) so we could do some sightseeing. And by sightseeing, I mean witnessing more of the aftermath from 2011.
Our only stop was to Hiroriyama Park, on top of a giant hill overlooking Ishinomaki port.

The city of Ishinomaki was one of the hardest, with almost half of it having been inundated by the tsunami.

From the top of the hill we had a stunning, but almost eerie view of the Pacific Ocean, stretching into the horizon. It was almost easy to imagine the ghost of the tsunami rushing towards the shore, something many of the survivors that ran to the hill for safety would have seen in real life.

Our guide, a member of the Ishinomaki YMCA, showed us pictures of what the port had looked like before 2011, and then pointed to the land below us. It was the exact place he had shown us in the picture, but it was just like my last trip, everything was barren, except for a large graveyard near the edge of the hill. 

*I apologize for the poor quality of this photo-my good camera died

After that, we took the trip down the hill to see part of the town up close. We first stopped by a little memorial (well, little except for the giant sign that read "がんばろう！石巻" Perservere! Ishinomaki) that was made by volunteers from the relief effort.

 The other thing we saw was a nearby school, Kadowaki Elementary, which survived the earthquake, only to catch on fire due to a massive pileup of cars that ended up next to it.

I don't remember much of what our guide said about this place, but I think he mentioned that the children made it out alright. I really hope...

Even more eerie than the empty shell of a burnt school was the giant graveyard next to it. Thankfully, it had been there before the tsunami/earthquake.

You can still see the car pile nearby

After that, we headed off to set up for the sing-a-long, which was actually pretty fun. We got to learn some old(er) Japanese songs, and they even made Bianka and me sing for them (I sang "Amazing Grace" while Bianka sang a Hungarian folk song).
And, in no time at all, we were off. But I will make sure that Tohoku still gets its due attention. I find it kind of sad that as soon as the media forgets these places, the rest of the world does too. Even Fukushima, which had nearly reached Chernobyl standards, has been forgotten by some. But the problem hasn't been solved yet! So I hope that the people that read this will remember that Tohoku, and any other place that has been struck by disaster in the last year or two (Haiti is still struggling), is still in need of help.
*Now, I don't know that much about trustworthy donation organizations, but I thought this website might be helpful to anyone that wants to donate (although the Red Cross one ends March 31).

Sorry for this rather depressing post! But I'm hoping to catch up on all my blogging now that I'm on break (I finished my sophmore year here!), and before my upcoming 10-day Rotary trip to Western Japan. Wish me luck!

じゃあね！