Wednesday

Wednesday

This morning we surprised ourselves by waking up of our own accord between 5:30 and 6:30, energized and enthusiastic. Spurred on by hunger, our hunting around in the cabinets of our cabin produced matches, sugar packets, and a few spiders. This fare not being precisely what we dreamed of for this morning, we proceeded to get ourselves through the showers and then wandered to the men’s cabin. After congregating there (and discovering they had all the food), we were all given a tour of the property and an explanation of the work we’re doing on site in exchange for staying for free in the cabins.

Our last day here will consist of clearing dense brush using exciting rotating metal blade weed-whackers that are illegal in California due to their extreme efficiency, and re-stringing a long section of barb-wire fence. Our men are in ongoing but quiet negotiations amongst themselves as to which of these jobs is most dangerous, and therefore most suited to them. Practically speaking, I would prefer the risk of losing my feet to losing my eyes; impractically speaking, I really just like using loud, dangerous objects. It appears, though, that those of us with the double X chromosome are going to be consigned to the barb-wire job. I’m suspicious that what Lord Peter Wimsey said was correct when he informed Harriet that nine tenths of the driving force behind chivalry—known as chauvinism in its more drastic forms—is a desire to hog all the fun for oneself.

Anyhow, Brian and Jen made us a welcome and lovely breakfast of eggs and ham, fabulous Japanese green tea our landlord brought us, and English muffins with what appeared to be elderberry jelly. After Jen, Anna, Hannah, and I had been fed and watered our group gathered up our things, piled in our vans, and headed to our main work site in Yamamoto Cho (山元ちょ).

Once there we met up with Rev. Cal Cummings and Mr. Abe (ah-bay), a Japanese man who lives near the site, and were given our instructions. Raun and Robert worked on cutting out the pvc plumbing in one section of the building, Steve got the job of demolishing some walls, and Anna, Hannah, Jen, Brian, and I got set to clearing out several inches of silt and mess that the tsunami had deposited all over the ground under the floor. Rev Cummings and David Moore wandered around, helping wherever they were needed. The work was long, hard, and uninteresting for anybody to read about—though fun to do with our group.

The really exciting thing for me was that Japanese people kept stopping by to see what we were doing, ask questions, and offer suggestion—in Japanese. Anna had been to Japan before and picked up a lot through listening, so she’s great at instinctively knowing what to say in conversations. I took Japanese for two years in college, but haven’t had practical experience in it. We make a good, balanced team and have had a blast trying to have conversations with Japanese people that are intelligible for all parties concerned. We’ve succeeded for the most part, which is incredibly exciting for me.