On Friday night, we went to the Sendai train station to board a
chartered bus to Ishinomaki. There was a group of about 30 of us on
the bus who were heading to Onagawa (Miyagi Prefecture) for our first Chicago
Day! The Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Chicago had been busy preparing for
our two Chicago Days in the Tohoku region of Japan. Our group of volunteers
consisted of those of us who came directly from Chicago, Japanese families who
had previously lived in Chicago, a famous Japanese Enka singer named Jero, and
a famous Hawaiian-Japanese man named Konishiki, who is a retired Japanese sumo
wrestler, a children’s television host, and a singer.
Chicago Days occurred as a result of our wonderful Miki, who works as a manager for JCCC. When planning for this year’s JEEP trip, those at JCCC thought it would be a nice idea to have Chicago Days in a few communities that were affected by the tsunami as an opportunity for the people in those communities to have an activity/event to look forward to, and as a way for those communities to receive a bit of media coverage to further their rebuilding efforts.
When driving to Onagawa and to Kamaishi (Iwate Prefacture), we had the opportunity to drive along the coast, through miles and miles of piles of debris. It is truly overwhelming to see the mass amounts of debris, and pictures don’t begin to capture the magnitude of devastation and loss.
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One woman we spoke with talked about the fact that there are over 100 miles of mountains of this debris along the northern coast of Japan. She talked about the smell that was in the air for months as a result.
When we arrived each day, we spent our time filling our red eco-bags with free donations of pens, t-shirts, magnets, additional bags, noodles, chopsticks, dental floss, etc. We filled a thousand bags each day, working with many other volunteers, young and old, in an assembly line. We handed out the bags to all of our guests as they entered the Chicago Day events.
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| Volunteers from the US and Japan! |
Guests
were invited to receive a free Chicago-style hotdog, a drink, and a delicious
crepe, which was a pretty incredible thing to provide for a thousand people.
Miki had spent time requesting donations in Chicago, and the creation of a
Chicago-style hot dog in Japan was no small feat. The people were very
appreciative, and seemed to enjoy them, though the jalepenos weren’t
necessarily a favorite topping!
Matt,
Joe, and I took the stage for about 10 minutes each day, facilitating a little
“north side/south side” game show about Chicago. People were quite surprised at
the fact that we were principals, as principals must be at least 50 years old
in Japan. We felt a bit like celebrities on Saturday, as we were interviewed by at least 5 newspapers that day and also recorded our own television commercial! (I don't have pictures or videos of either of these, yet!)
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| People either sat on the floor or in seats. |
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| We were amazed when people took off their shoes to be respectful of the space provided to them. |
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| Many of the visitors were senior citizens, which is common for many areas hit by the tsunami. |
We
also had over an hour to teach English through origami at a tiny little table, though
I think all of the kids really should have been teaching us origami! Even the littlest kids were able to fold the paper with accuracy to make something. We made
small fortune tellers that I remember making in elementary school, and the kids
enjoyed them. I was surprised that the kids weren’t familiar with them, and the kids seemed amused that the Americans were teaching them the Japanese art of origami.
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My new friend Yuka actually lived in Wilmette, Illinois until she was 5 years old.
She is at the University of Tokyo, heard about Chicago Days, and decided to come volunteer. |
Jero
took the stage each day, and being an African-American man from Pittsburgh who
sings Japanse Enka (folk) music, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. His voice
was absolutely beautiful, and he had quite a fan club with the more
senior members of the audience.
The
real star of the show was Konishiki. He and his wife, and their “team” of five
or six others, sang, danced, and laughed on stage, bringing an energy to the
event that is not a regular part of these families’ lives. I have to say that
they were quite a couple, even on the bus to and from each location. I had to
look Konishiki up, because he is well-loved by children and adults for the
various jobs he has had- as a top sumo wrestler in Japan for many years, and
as a host for a children’s top television show in Japan for over ten years. I'm not sure how much singing he does in addition to the children's television show, but he and his team have been "on the road" for months, raising money and bringing communities together through his Riseup fo Japan efforts. He gave us each a Konishiki-sized t-shirt the morning after we met him. We'll be visiting with him again on Tuesday in Tokyo!
I think you’ll enjoy the following link to “the dump truck”
Konishiki.
We heard many stories from the people of the Tohoku region of Japan during our Chicago Days. We received heartfelt thanks from the people for organizing a special event for them, for bringing them together, and for coming from great distances to see them. We saw tears and laughter. One senior woman even gave us place mats that she had made from her grandmother's kimono as a thank you gift to us.
At the end of the day, a certificate from Mayor Rahm Emmanuel on
behalf of the city of Chicago was presented to the town planner and mayor of
each town, read by two high-school age Japanese-American boys. They did a
fantastic job and made me proud of Chicago’s work in Japan.
Here is a link to one of the newspaper articles published about Chicago Days. Unless you can read Japanese, you'll just have to enjoy the pictures!
http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZZO42951010U2A620C1000000/
