summer weekend in Minakami

If you find yourself in Tokyo in late summer with high-energy adventurous kids to entertain and want to hightail it out of the city, you can't do much better than a weekend in Minakami. There are several outfits up there offering all sorts of activities, but we booked everything with Canyons, and you don't really need anybody else. We even stayed at Canyons' own Alpine lodge, which offers basic Japanese-style tatami rooms (shared baths down the hall), a communal kitchen and barbecue sites for self-catering, a cafe and bar. There's also a nearby swimming hole with rope-swing and a  small campground next to the parking lot, if you'd rather pitch a tent and save a few bucks (not ideal but ok, friends say, if you can stand the sound of trains roaring past in the middle of the night). A half dozen other families we know were there the same weekend, not all doing the same activities at the same time, but all meeting up at the end of the day for drinks etc., and we had one big group barbecue, with each family bringing something to throw on the grill and a large salad or side to share.

The guys who run the Canyons operation really know what they are doing -- they know the area, they know the terrain - some of the most popular courses they created themselves. And they take every safety precaution. You bring a swimsuit, they provide the rest: wetsuits, life jackets, helmets, etc. Many Canyons guides are ski instructors during the winter.

From July to September, conditions on the Tone River are calm enough - Grade 1-2 rapids - for children to go whitewater rafting. That is, the rapids are grade 1-2. In Spring, they're grade 3-4, and you have to be at least 13 to participate.

 

suiting up at the base lodge

 

safety briefing 

right before setting off down the river, with the Dix family

It was the last weekend in August, and the current was just swift enough (in parts) to keep things interesting. We had a few good thrills paddling through some rough patches, our guide steering from the rear and telling us when to pull our oars out of the water and just hold on...

 
Canyons' own photog took some great shots for us 

my own pics, snapped from my seat in the second row of our raft

At several points along the way, we were able to climb out of our rafts and float downriver feet first, or climb onto the banks and up onto some rocks to jump back in.


Not everybody had the nerve to leap off from this one very high cliff; somehow I managed it but only because I was afraid I would fall if I tried to climb back down in my neoprene socks! Here's Terry and the boys in midair:


At the end of the course the guides flipped a raft over and let the kids bounce off it and into the water below..

 

On the Sunday we did the family-style canyoning, which was brilliant. It entails taking a ride up into the mountains and then hiking along forest trails until you reach a good point of entry, where rocks become water slides.







 
Our boys love water parks, so they were over the moon doing this. Canyons offers canyoning for grownups too, and Terry says it's similar, just more intense - more climbing, deeper, rougher waters, etc. Something the expat guys do when the wife and kids are away for the summer.
We were lucky to have Mike as our guide. (He's the one not wearing a yellow life jacket in the photo above). Originally from New Zealand, he's lived and worked in Japan for years - he's one of the guys who started the whole Canyons operation - and is fluent in Japanese. I kept wondering how he keeps his long ropey dreadlocks from catching on the rocks. He made a sculpture for us:

Logistics: Many of the families who spent this weekend in Minakami with us drove up from Tokyo, a 140 km or 2-hr journey up the Kanetsu Expressway. And they were glad to have their cars, to get out and explore the area a little. A few moms took their daughters to a co-ed outdoor onsen - pretty setting, lots of naked old men. A few of the families went kayaking, which they had to arrange separately, as Canyons doesn't offer it.

It's just as easy to take the train - we took a JR to Omiya and then a Shinkansen to Jomo-kogen station, which took less than 2 hrs, plus another half hour van ride to the lodge. One of the Canyons guides collected us at the station at no extra charge. Everything was arranged via email: canyons@english.jp

In addition to the rafting and the canyoning, we managed to fit in a half day of mountain biking with MTB Japan, also booked through Canyons. MTB provided the bikes, helmets and gloves; the instructors picked us up at the lodge and brought us back. We learned how to cycle down steps, up steep rocky slopes, down and around steep curvy trails covered in leaves that make you skid out. And I learned something else that day: that I'm a big chicken.


CANYONS Outdoor Adventure Experiences
TEL: 0278-72-2811    FAX: 0278-72-2812
Canyons Ltd., Japan
Tours & Lessons
Alpine Lodge
Canyons on Facebook


Canyons Minakami Base:
45 Yubiso, Minakami-machi, Tone-gun, Gunma-ken

P.S. As a bonus, there was a matsuri that weekend - most communities in Japan throw some sort of summer celebration, or harvest festival, with food, beer and sake stalls and revelers processing in yukata robes, headbands and and tabi sock-booties, beating on taiko drums, singing and/or dancing around. Mike, Mr. Canyons himself, drove a bunch of us lodgers out to the Minakami festivities in time to catch the fireworks:

Nadeshiko No. 1!

I am thrilled that Japan's women's soccer team won the World Cup on Sunday. My mother was stunned that I would root against my own country, but Japan is my country too, and the Japanese needed something to celebrate after a spring from hell.

Yūshō omedetō !!!
Congratulations on the victory!

Image: AP

'Hope for a Radioactive-Free Future'

UPDATE 11/15/11: Just read in the Oct 17 issue of The New Yorker that while sunflowers can leach some of the radiation out of contaminated soil, Japanese scientists have since concluded that those that were planted in former rice fields near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have had little effect.


Here's an interesting story by Matthew Battles in Fast Company...

A young Japanese entrepreneur is trying to convince people to sow sunflower seeds in Fukushima Prefecture, intending the plants to cleanse the soil of radioactive contamination. Project leader Shinji Handa has sold some 10,000 packets of sunflower seeds at 500 yen ($6) to people throughout Japan, ostensibly to produce seeds that will be sent to Fukushima to create a sunflower maze.

Given the scope of the Fukushima disaster, planting sunflowers may seem quixotic at best, but the principle behind it is sound. Many plants have evolved mechanisms to adapt to high levels of toxins and even radiation, taking up heavy metals and radioactive isotopes and sequestering them in disposable parts like stems and leaves. Scientists last year reported on several varieties of domestic plants, including sunflowers, that are thriving around Chernobyl, gradually reducing contamination levels in the soil...

Click here to read the rest.

about that beef

Headline in the Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, July 13, p. A13:

"Tainted Beef Enters Japanese Food Supply"

The lede: "Japan grappled with a fresh radiation scare Tuesday, as authorities found that beef contaminated with radioactive cesium had been shipped to shops and restaurants throughout the country."

Uh, oh.

The story continues: "The beef, from six cattle raised on a farm near the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, registered radioactive-cesium levels up to seven times that permitted by Japanese food-safety standards. Some of the meat had already likely been eaten..."

Jeezus.

"Experts said the level was too low to create health problems in people who ate just one or two servings."

Oh, well, ok.

By the way: "Radioactive cesium emits gamma rays, which can damage cellular DNA and raise the risk of cancer."

Man.

"The levels found in the beef, though, would become a health concern only if a person ate large quantities every day for a year, said Shizuko Kakonuma, a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences who sits on an independent committee investigating the Fukushima Daiichi accident."

And...exhale.

Still: "The government ought to increase its testing of cattle for radiation contamination..."

Hell, yeah!

The amazing Maru

Last Friday Terry took me out for the best birthday dinner ever: modern kaiseki at Maru, a charming basement-level restaurant off Aoyama-dori, near the Omotesando crossing (same block as Las Chicas, but closer to the main road -- around the corner from Muji and Crocs). Very reasonably priced too.

a few of the dishes we had, all of them scrumptious:
fried lotus root, in a glaze of arum root, red peppers and soy (renkon no kinpira)


corn tempura (toumorokoshi no kakiage)


I think this is duck (kamorousu to nasu moriawase) or it might be the beef (kuroge wagyu isozuke sumiaburi)

chicken with spring onions in a citrus-soy sauce (jidori no tatsutaage negiponzu)

We also had shitake mushrooms stuffed with chopped shrimp cooked in a taijin pot (futami shitake to yasai tajin) and shrimp and summer vegetable croquettes with sweet miso (sakuraebi to okara korokke) -- not the best of the night but still tasty.

As for drinks...
Terry tried three kinds of sake while I worked my way through the umeshu menu.
I think the one of the left was my favorite. It tasted vaguely of apricots.

At the end of the evening our server pulled this fourth bottle of umeshu out from his special stash. It was also very good. I need to stop drinking the cheap stuff from the grocery store. These were so much better!

I always have my umeshu with rocks. Sometimes with a splash of soda if it's too syrupy-sweet but I didn't have that problem at this place.
why is the ice in Japan so good?

From The Japan Times' review:

Rakushokushu Maru

Location: Aoyama KT Building B1F, 5-50-8 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku
(03) 6418 5572

Open: Lunch: 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. (Mon.-Fri.); dinner 6 p.m.-1 a.m. (Fri. 6 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sun. 6 p.m.-midnight)

It's the 1st of the month. Here's your $452, honeyI

'Wives Tighten Purses on Japan's Salarymen'

According to a survey by Shinsei Financial Co., the average allowance given to Japanese salarymen by their wives-- who typically manage the family finances, including the husband's earnings -- is now a pitiful $15 a day, or 36,500 yen per month -- the lowest since 1982, Bloomberg reported in this article dated June 27, 2011. Economic growth in Japan has been stuck at less than 1% a year for the past 10 years, exacerbating deflation; wages are down since the March 11 earthquake/tsunami. Chances of a consumer-driven rebound? Slim.

Workers’ allowances peaked in 1990 at the height of the country’s asset and real-estate bubble, with men receiving a monthly 76,000 yen, more than double what they get today, according to the survey. Respondents in [the June 27] report said they spend the greatest proportion of the money on lunch, dispensing an average 490 yen.

That's a beef bowl at Yoshinoya. Or two cucumber rolls from a sidewalk sushi vendor. Or 4 sticks of yakitori from the Food Show.

It's a Coffee Jelly Frappuccino at Starbucks.

Read the story here.

free cake!

This is what happens when you go to a neighborhood restaurant every other week, usually on a Tuesday or Thursday and always an hour earlier than most other patrons would dream of dining (so the place is empty aside from yourselves) over the course of 3+ years. Both the waiter-manager and the cook smile as if greeting old friends, and they start preparing the kids' usual -- fried chicken and margarita pizza. And when your child mentions that it's your birthday (technically it's tomorrow, but whatever), they go all out -- at the end of the meal, before bringing the check, they switch off the lights and, with candles ablaze, deliver a slide of roll cake with sliced strawberries and "Mommy" written in chocolate on the side of the plate. And then they sing. And the manager takes a picture with his own digital camera. And then asks for your email address. And then emails it to you within the hour. With a message that reads, "Thank you for coming every time!" and "We wish you a HAPPY LIFE!"

I love Japan. And I will absolutely keep going to La Boheme-Ebisu.

Usually it's just me and my two boys grabbing dinner at this place, but this time we had friends with us. Standing in the back, arm in arm: Ana and Pedro, recent arrivals from Brazil. Pedro's 3-yr-old brother was with us too, but he missed the photo...

photo of the day

Spotted on Komazawa-dori, around 9 a.m. Tuesday, heading toward Ebisu. I have to say, it's really not as hard as you might think to pedal in high heels.

for PB&Js

I've never before seen this "peanut cream" (left) but now it's available at the combini!

Mejiro shotengai

I met up with Louisa the other day and we wandered up and down Mejiro's neighborhood shopping street, or shotengai (a term I can't believe took me three years to learn). We grabbed lunch, talked about books and trains and Tohoku, and while walking back to the JR train station, we passed a tatami shop. I didn't realize that underneath the mat's soft top layer of woven straw (onto which this guy is sewing a fabric border) there's a foam core between two boards of compressed wood chips (see lower right). Apparently this is how newer tatami are made; in the old days, the mat was made up of rice straw through and through.

Yakuza in Tohoku

The most important thing is helping the weak. Duty and kindness are second. Then the third would be: don’t betray others.

– Matsuyama Shinichi, chairman of the Kyokuto-kai yakuza organisation, on what it means to be a yakuza member.

For the yakuza helping the relief effort, it’s partly about living up to the slogans they profess. It’s also about getting a stake in the reconstruction of Japan. Construction is big business.

– Tomohiko Suzuki, author of I’ve Met 1,200 Yakuza, investigative journalist and former editor of the yakuza fan magazine Jitsuwa Jidai Bull.

Read this fascinating story by Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice (which I swear I am going to read), about the role of organized crime (yakuza) in Japanese society, and the response by some of its members to the disaster in Tohoku. Think truck loads of food and supplies, delivered immediately and under cover of night...

It's in the Asia Literary Review, vol. 20, Summer 2011.

the boys after school

Shibuya station, West bus terminal

Hiro-o, 1 chome

today's treat from the combini

Purchase motivated solely by packaging.

Score! Something we actually like - caramels.

one of these things

is not like the other...

Who can tell me what these things are? (Hint: my boys collect them and use them whilst doing homework.)

OK, that was an easy one. Now tell me which one isn't one of those things.

Bonus points for the person who reveals the unique problem these things present for an American parent whose kids attend the British School.

Go!

What IS the Red Cross doing?

Here's a link to a pdf file from the Red Cross on some of the work they have done so far in the aftermath of the disaster. (When you click on the hyperlinked text above, the pdf file will immediately start downloading to your computer. It's a three-pager, a quick read, and gives a good synopsis but it's the two-month report so it's more than a month old.)

On June 10 the American Red Cross announced it was making another $46 million donation to the Japanese Red Cross, bringing its contributions to date to nearly $210 million.

According to the press release:

Three months on from the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan’s northeast coastline ... the Red Cross remains focused on helping to improve living conditions for many of the 98,000 people remaining in evacuation centers - most of which are situated in the hardest hit prefectures of Miyagi, Fukushima and Iwate. Japanese Red Cross employees and volunteers are providing a range of services for the evacuees and plans are underway to install washing machines, water tanks for hand washing, privacy partitions and televisions. “The physical and mental health of evacuees is of major concern, particularly where people are facing prolonged stays in centers,” said Alex Mahoney, disaster management expert with the American Red Cross. “Longer-term solutions to find more appropriate accommodation for people who have lost their homes are urgently needed.”

The Red Cross is supporting families moving into temporary housing units provided by the government, helping to restore a sense of normality in their lives. Home appliance packages, comprised of a washing machine, rice cooker, refrigerator, hot water dispenser, microwave and television, will be provided to more than 90,000 families with support from the American Red Cross.

The Red Cross is also increasing the number of caregivers and psychological support teams working in evacuation centers and nursing homes to address mental health issues, post traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety amongst survivors.

With major damage to health and care services, another priority is to support medical facilities, such as hospitals, clinics and care homes. In Ishinomaki, the Red Cross is planning to boost local health services by building and equipping temporary medical facilities. Specially-equipped beds are also being donated to existing nursing homes across three prefectures where many elderly people require special care.

To date, the Japanese Red Cross has sent approximately $1 billion to 15 municipalities charged with distributing cash grants to the survivors who have lost their homes, loved ones and livelihoods as a result of the tsunami.

Picture of the Day

This is from Japan Today (and this is the link that will take you to the webpage)

(C) OGA for Aid (Daniele Bragaglio)

A wrecked car is seen in Minamisanrikucho, Miyagi Prefecture. More than three months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, people are still in dire need of assistance, say members of OGA for Aid, which has been in the field providing assistance daily based on the motto “no person left behind.”

I met the people of O.G.A. who are busting their butts to help the people of Minamisanriku a couple weeks ago, when I was in Sendai. They made a presentation about their mission and the state of things there, about how the people of this town still aren't getting what they need three months on, and described some of the difficulties and frustrations of relief work. And this is just one town - one that was completely flattened by the tsunami. As of June 1 there were still 9,500 living in shelters (more than half the pre-March 11 population). Click here to read more about this startup NPO and to see the latest needs list. The organization has a Facebook page too.

the choice up north: stay home or eat

This story posted June 18 by the UK's Daily Mail echoes some of the things I've heard first-hand from people I know who've been up to Tohoku and have seen for themselves what's going on up there. And it ain't good.

According to the article: "With unemployment running at 90 per cent, the needy are starting to revolt. One third of families are refusing to move to temporary housing, opting to remain in shelters to hang on to their precious food benefits. Sixty per cent of the 28,000 temporary homes remain unoccupied. A staggering 90,000 people remain in shelters."

And: "The worst affected may prove to be those who lost nothing in the way of homes or relatives. They may have no running water, no money, no employment. But when compensation is finally awarded, they will be entitled to nothing" because they will not qualify as "victims."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

When I first read the headling I thought the story would be about the people in the devastated areas, turning on each other, that that would be the "proof" that Japanese 'wa' or harmony was a myth, but apparently it is the government that is failing the people, not doing their jobs, not acting quickly or capably to minimize suffering and get recovery going. There are plenty of examples of people helping each other get by, taking neighbors in, etc., so I think there is still some 'wa' on that level. Take the woman in the story Chieko Miura, 62, who has 12 evacuees still living with her in her home on a hilltop just north of Minamisanriku. If that's not wa...

tourism 'takes a nose dive'

JAPAN STRUGGLES TO ATTRACT TOURISTS

By Chico Harlan
June 15, 2011

TOKYO — Beth Reiber, the freelance writer responsible for the set of Frommer’s guidebooks on Japan, felt lucky just to get on the plane. Her editors had canceled plans to publish a Tokyo guidebook for 2012, thinking it didn’t make sense to spend all that money to publish a book that nobody would buy.

But Reiber pushed back and gave them the same message that Japan is struggling to give the world: Tokyo remains radiation-free and just as safe as always.

The plane from Minneapolis to Tokyo was “packed,” Reiber said, “and I was thinking, ‘That’s great. People are coming to Japan.’ Then we arrived at Narita [airport in Tokyo], and about 30 people got off the plane. The rest went on to Vietnam.”

Although the triple catastrophe of three months ago caused its most acute damage along Japan’s northeastern coast, it changed the image of the entire country, with millions across the globe following the news and concluding that one of the world’s safest nations was no longer so.

Much of this is founded on misperception: A region was battered, not all of Japan. But the March 11 disaster has dealt a severe blow to a tourism industry the nation had been counting on to help offset static domestic consumer demand due to a shrinking population. Tourism and its secondary industries contributed 5.3 percent to Japan’s gross domestic product and accounted for 4.3 million jobs in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the government-run Japan Tourism Agency.

Now, when Japanese officials speak about a brisk recovery powered by necessary reconstruction spending, they acknowledge that the tourism industry could face a particularly long-term setback amid lingering fears about radiation, food safety and the possibility of future quakes.

“Everybody else in the world thinks Japan is saturated with radiation,” said Zensuke Suzuki, an international travel executive at the Japan Tourism Agency. “And we can try to convince people otherwise, but whatever Japan itself says, people won’t really trust.”

Amid the ongoing nuclear crisis, Japanese travel officials have not tried to calculate the effect on foreign tourism. But eventually they will promote not just Tokyo but also major cities such as Kyoto and Osaka that are farther from the disaster zone. They will also promote travel to the tsunami­-battered Tohoku region, in the hopes that tourism can boost its ailing economy.

Radiation fears

Japan’s travel agencies used to base their campaigns on postcard images: geishas, white-capped mountains, plates of sushi. Buses docked every afternoon along the main shopping streets in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district, depositing Chinese tourists who thronged department stores that had signs in Mandarin and ATMs from Beijing-based banks. The Japanese government designated 2011 as a benchmark year for tourism, hoping for the first time to exceed 10 million international travelers.

Now, the Japan National Tourism Organization posts radiation levels from around the world on its Web site. (Most days, Seoul has twice the background radiation that Tokyo does.) In April, the number of tourists visiting Japan was down 62.5 percent from the same month last year, and a comparable decline was expected for May, though statistics have not been released. Airlines have slashed flights. Small-hotel owners fear for their businesses. New York’s Metropolitan Opera came recently to Japan for a three-week tour, but two of its superstar singers backed out at the last moment because of radiation concerns.

For celebrities who do come to Japan, their mere arrival sometimes doubles as a sign of solidarity and hope. Despite reported fears among his crew members, pop star Justin Bieber kept his plans for two Japan shows, in Osaka and Tokyo. “Like I said . . . we are going to JAPAN! #supportjapan,” he tweeted May 8. Ten days later, he was at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, posing for photos with nine schoolchildren from Tohoku.

“Justin, I just want to tell you how much we admire you and appreciate you coming here to Japan,” U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos told the singer. “You’re a very special young man, sending a message to the entire world.”

In a way, Japan is depending on outsiders — celebrities, travel writers and government officials — to reassure foreigners. The United States recommends that its citizens avoid travel within a 50-mile radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but on May 16 it relaxed the restriction slightly, advising that people could safely use the bullet-train line and the Tohoku expressway, which cut through the no-go zone.

When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited the Daiichi facility last month during a trilateral summit, they ate locally grown cherries and cucumbers, and both pledged to help Japan’s tourism industry recover. A week later, a 100-member delegation of Chinese travel officials visited Japan.

“Having [Wen] come, that has had an enormous effect,” said Shinya Kurosawa, an executive at JTB, the largest travel agency in Japan. “But nothing will improve drastically overnight. There hasn’t been any proof to say that there has been an end to the radiation danger, and that has a lot of impact on the consumer psychology.”

Few foreign faces

For Reiber, the travel writer, this latest trip to Japan has underscored the depth of that impact. Every day, she picks a neighborhood, touring hotel rooms, double-checking restaurant menus, asking about operating hours. On her first day, in Tokyo’s Ueno neighborhood, she saw “four foreigners total.” When she visited one branch of the Sakura guesthouse, a worker there said it was catering to a domestic clientele and offering cheaper prices.

Reiber has been coming here for almost 30 years, starting in 1983 — Japan’s economic-powerhouse years, when the country didn’t need tourists and didn’t try to get them. After spending several months here in 2009, compiling the 10th edition of the Frommer’s Japan travel guidebook, she wrote about the way in which the nation’s recession had forced the beginning of the tourist industry. She wrote about 100-yen stores and lunch deals at upscale restaurants. She wrote that “virtually every prefecture” is “trying to figure out how to lure more international travelers.”

On Monday, Reiber spent several hours walking through the Akasaka area, a salaryman-friendly neighborhood of office buildings and lunchtime eating spots. At the exclusive Hotel Okura, a luxury spot for foreigners, she asked whether the hotel was still offering its afternoon tea service and free shuttle bus. Reiber took notes.

“International guests — do you have fewer now?” Reiber asked.

“It’s half of what it was,” one employee told her.

“Is it getting better?”

“Yes. Slowly.”

A few hours later, Reiber talked about the ways in which Tokyo feels dimmer, cheaper, more homogenous. She still isn’t sure how her Frommer’s guide will address radiation concerns. Until a few years ago, she said, the guidebook included an entry for the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s free museum, an eight-floor center with displays about energy history and the safety of nuclear power. She said she eventually deleted the entry, because the museum appeared like a shameless company advertisement.

The museum closed May 31.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

If you want to see photos...

You can click here to see my Flickr album, but my snaps are nothing compared to the talented work of two pros, Dee & Tracey from 37 Frames. (There are a few great shots in my album but they are the ones that I "borrowed" from fellow volunteers who shared their pics with me on Facebook. It's not theft, it's a tribute!)

Dee & Tracey's brilliant shots, which you can view here on their blog, show in living color the condition of northeast Japan after the Great Tohoku earthquake/tsunami of March 11. They have driven relief supplies up to the area a few times already and so have several photo-driven journals posted over the last three months. In "Black Mouth," an account of their first trip up to Ishinomaki posted March 29, they wrote something that sort sums up how I justified my own recent weekend up there with a group of mainly Western businesspeople ("Get Your Hands Dirty" program organized by ACCJ): "All we can do is make a difference on a human level. Try and help, assist, listen to one person. Touch one. If we could all affect this, volunteer even for a day, reach out to just one person then collectively tides of survival give way to those of recovery and life beyond."

This follow-up was posted on April 19, after their second visit: "[In] downtown Ishinomaki ... the big white boat on the corner now doesn’t wait to cross the road. The dramatically parked red fishing vessel is also gone, the streets a little bit clearer, change certainly occurring here." When I walked through the downtown area with my group on June 5, most storefronts were still dark, but a school uniform shop was open for business and you could see through the front windows that it was stocked with merchandise. An izakaya was functioning as a kitchen for Peace Boat's food service for the people in nearby shelters. But signs of life (economic and otherwise) were few and far between. And the waterfront was flat, bleak, a mess.

Click here to see some more of Dee & Tracey's astonishing photographs, so beautifully rendered. I should've linked to them ages ago.

the holdup

From the blog Foreign Volunteers Japan, posted June 10 (reprinted from Yomiuri Daily newspaper):

Less than half of the more than 80 billion yen in disaster-relief donations already sent to prefectures affected by the March 11 quake and tsunami has reached the hands of people waiting for urgently needed cash to rebuild their shattered lives.

To be paid, a person needs a disaster victim certificate. To get a certificate, one must undergo an inspection. The problem is that there is not enough staff to handle the issuing of the certificates, which has severely slowed up distribution of the donation money.

Click here to read the full article. (Foreign Volunteers Japan is also a Facebook Group. And here's a link to its Ongoing Volunteer Opportunities page. There are so many organizations out there striving to help fix the unfixable. )

Facts and figures:
Municipalities in Miyagi prefecture have paid out just 28% of the 33.1 billion yen they've received in donations; in Fukushima, the rate is higher: 61% of the 35 billion yen received has been distributed. In Iwate prefecture, 47% of 10.2 billion yen has gone out to victims.

This is interesting: If your house was completely destroyed, you get 350,000 yen. Partial damage, either by tsunami or fire: 180,000 yen.

But there's another issue in all this. It's my understanding from Peace Boat that local governments at least in Miyagi prefecture have yet to determine whether certain areas should be rebuilt. Those residents who receive their compensation and move forward with reconstruction without awaiting official word on this could end up being told to relocate, their streets declared unsafe. How long can people wait? Not just for the money, but to find out the fate of their neighborhoods?

It's a fair question. But rebuilding in the same spot that got swept away with the March 11 tsunami seems, well shortsighted. But it wouldn't be the first time. This Japan Times article looks at several communities that refused to leave low-lying areas despite previous wipe-outs. Yoshihama in Iwate prefecture was an exception -- only four houses were lost and only one person died on March 11, because the town had relocated its homes to higher ground after the devastating tsunami of 1896. For other towns it took a double whammy -- 1896 and again in 1933 -- to convince people to consider moving. According to the article, in those other towns the fishermen were inclined to prioritize convenience over an uncertain threat, and so they returned to resettle again on lower ground close to the sea. Then others would follow the fishermen's lead.

At a party the other night I was talking to someone (who's in a position to know about these things) about the frustrations of assisting with the relief and recovery efforts, and he said that this resistance to leave the coast will not change even now. The fisherman from these small towns on the Tohoku coast simply do not want to live away from where their boats are docked.

Another thing this guy said: without qualification, the Japanese government has failed the people of Tohoku "on every level," in the way they've responded (or not) to the events of three months ago. The best way for somebody to help out is not to go through "proper channels" but to find out what is needed in a particular place (by talking to somebody who's on the ground, officially or not), to acquire those things, and then to drive them up north and hand them out yourself. My friend Lisa, along with her husband and some friends, did exactly that last weekend. Here is a photo of her after one of her supermarket runs:


I was skeptical of these kinds of rogue relief operations but I'm not anymore. I should point out that Lisa knows somebody who'd been living in the area for three months who could direct and guide her. I still think that's important, to have contacts like that. Avoid the red tape, play the gaijin card.

I just wish I had a car. And a license to drive in Japan. And kids who could fend for themselves, or a full time nanny.