Last summer, Ben and I hosted a Japanese high school student in our home as part of a program designed to bring some much-needed relief to students living in the region affected by last year’s devastating earthquake and tsunami. It was only for three weeks, but when we put her on the plane to fly back to Japan, I felt like a piece of my own heart was torn from my chest. Risa’s name is written on my heart in permanent marker.
For those of you that had been following my trip to Japan, sorry I cut out half way through the week. I think by Thursday of last week I was exhausted and was enjoying spending the couple hours before bed hanging out with the team rather than blogging. Fortunately for you, it is 3.30am in Texas, I am wide awake and can blog now – The same could be said for the last couple nights. Hello jet lag, please go away soon.
Anyway, back to the trip. Wednesday morning I lead our morning devotional. I really believe some good things are beginning in Japan and that the nation is experiencing a rebuilding unlike anything they have seen before. I enjoyed leading the devotional, more than I thought I would, and hopefully those around me did too. We ran fifteen minutes late getting to the vans and by the time we recapped didn’t hit the road until about 8.00. Our team leader, Laura, took the driver’s seat today since she was going to be driving on her own Friday. It was both her first time driving on the other side of the road as well as the other side of the car. She did well, although there was one moment when, in slow motion, I think I saw paint from our van jump off the side onto a car sitting at a red light. After a few laughs and heart rates back to normal, we carried on to Shichigahama where work soon began.
I returned to the second house where I began working on Wednesday. There are only four of our original team along with two Japanese guys (out of six that are working with us all week) at this house. We literally spend the day chiseling at glue on concrete with chisel and hammer. Lucky for us, we have Suzuki San and the Suzuki Cafe. Mr. Suzuki is very outgoing and loves to provide us with a tea break. We have tea, coffee (Blendy Stick), Japanese rice cakes, a spicy nut mix and PB&J on the thickest pillow of bread known to man. It makes Texas Toast look wimpy and is quite delicious. I must say the Blendy Stick I brought back doesn’t quite taste the same as at the Suzuki Cafe – it must be the water…or more likely the break from chiseling that was so fabulous.
A short hour later and the other team arrives for us all to enjoy lunch on top of the house. Being that I just had my fill of snacks and coffee I am not too hungry and eat maybe a third of my Bento Box. We share some laughs and then get back to work and chisel. And chisel. And chisel some more. Seven hours of chiseling today and we are only two-thirds of the way complete. By my projections the team will finish the job around lunch on Friday (I don’t know at this point which house I will be in).
We clean up, pack our belongings and get on the road. Traffic is a bear today and it takes us a little over two hours to get to the Onsen. It is well past dark by the time we arrive. Because of the long journey we are only given thirty-five minutes to “bathe” instead of the normal hour. I complete my Onsen in about twenty then rush to the waiting area where there are two automatic massaging chairs – I don’t think they are this good in the States. After one of the girls is finished, I get in the chair and spend the next ten minutes, all for 100 yen ($1.50!), getting the best chair massage I have and will ever have. Along with the Japanese toilet and hand dryer, this is one thing I want at my house. As it gets the last knot out of my back and the leg rest goes back down, the last team member arrives and we get back in the vans to head home.
The usual routine ensues – dinner, hanging out then to bed. This night is a bit different, since it is Brad’s birthday, so we have an assortment of cake to choose from. Delicious.
I think about blogging but something inside me tells me I will have plenty of time to do that in the middle of the night when I get back home…
It’s 22.00 and getting ready for bed. Between the time difference, not being able to sleep real well and it getting light early, I have been getting up in the morning about 4.45. I don’t mind it so much it just means getting quite tired in the evenings. Oh, factor in all the construction work we have been doing, too. Thankfully, the Onsen (I have been mispelling in earlier posts) rejuvenates after the hard work. In case you are wondering the Onsen are hot tubs, one side for women, one for men. It is segregated because you only wear…well, nothing. That’s part of the beauty for us Westerners. If you know me, though, this is nothing new, except for being with Japanese. We have gone to the Onsen every evening and will continue to do so until the end of the week. Tonight was one we haven’t been to before. It was a little more upscale than the other and the water much hotter too. I would post some pictures of this, but no one will allow me to take a camera in…just kidding, of course.
We only worked half a day today then drove down the coast after lunch. We drove to an area hit harder than where we have been working, which is hard to imagine. The work they have completed is quite remarkable after looking back at what it looked like six months ago. There is a construction ban along the coast and no one knows for sure if they will be able to build here again. Tomorrow I will try to be more in depth of the last couple days. Meanwhile, enjoy some new photos!
Today’s post would read much the same as yesterday. However, it is sunny and dry so I am able to get some pictures. They will have details but I am too tired to mess with that now. Besides, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I never said I was good at this…
6.00am. Get out of bed. For good. No, wait. I can’t. One of the other seven people staying upstairs is in the toilet. I suppose i could go outside for a bit before breakfast, but the rain quickly changes my mind. I lay in bed for awhile and then get my chance to wash up so i jump at it. I opt out of a shower since there is no hot water and ice-cold, well-water just doesn’t sound appealing, yet. I wash my hair and face in the sink, put on work clothes and head downstairs for breakfast. Banana nut muffin, an apple, some orange juice, and ham with cucumber on a roll.
7.30am. The director of United Japan, Nick Yoshita, arrives to pick us up with some of his guys. Like them, he looks to be in his mid to late twenties; we learn later in the day he is actually forty-six. We take our two vans through the wet, gray city about an hour to the area we will be spending the week. We make a turn off a main road and are suddenly next to the water. On both sides of this road are nothing but foundations and an occasional remnant of what was a home. A toilet sticks out and we all are suddenly quiet. We had been laughing with the young Japanese guys and joking with them, but now the mood is different. We aren’t entirely sure where we are headed so we drive around a few minutes looking for the first house. Here, lower than we were before, is a different scene. Mud is everywhere. What once were rice fields now contain cars and vans laying every which way. I would like to get a picture but the glass on the windows is foggy and the rain on the outside would get in the way. Piles of debris are all over from work that has been completed over the last almost eight months. We drive by the corner of the bay and see the ocean, a much different one than what we saw on the news. Waves break twenty feet from shore and are at most three feet high. I will try to get some pictures up tomorrow showing this area.
9.00am. We arrive at the first house where we drop off part of our team to work on a house. The home that was next door is no longer there. Nor is the one behind it, across the street, two down, and many more. We can see how this place withstood the tsunami. It is a very large home, made of concrete both inside and out. This team of six tell us this is the third tsunami the owner has lived through. His first he was in junior high, in 1942, during WWII; the second was in 1960 when there was an earthquake in Chile. We also learn that the glass in his home is so thick he didn’t hear the warning sirens when they went off only thirty minutes before the wall of water hit. His daughter drove up, put him in the car and they headed inland to safety. We pray with them and a couple other Americans who have been here for awhile. I meet Craig who is from Houston and I ask him how long he has been here. “Three and a half months,” he replies. Awesome.
9.25am. The rest of us head to another house a tenth of a mile away. The house is perched up fifteen feet from the ground with a wall of concrete below. Somehow the tsunami reached another fifteen feet taking water up to the second floor. The owner here is an elderly man who previously had rice fields he worked. Now he cleans the fields and his home. He is a quiet man but it is evident he is grateful to have us; snacks and drinks are always available for us. We are quickly given work orders, from pulling floors up, pulling off drywall and trim, to sweeping and removing. This goes on until about half past twelve when we break for lunch. Lunch is made by some of the ladies from one of the organizations we are working with, Samaritan’s Purse – the Bento Box; rice, pork katsu, sausage, a dumpling some sort of potato salad, and a piece of grapfruit. I love the Bento Box and look forward to tomorrow’s already even though I am stuffed half way through today’s. We take some pictures as a group and manage to get in some with a large spider and dragon flies like I have never seen before. Due to the mud and water in the field there are mosquitoes. Dragon flies love mosquitoes so there are literally thousands flying around all afternoon. We nickname the area Dragon Love Field. Lunch is over and we head back to work until shortly before dark, around quarter to five. We pick up the other team and drive back to the house to drop a few people off. The rest of us head to the Ensen. This will become a nightly ritual before dinner and will explain in a future post. Finally we head back to the house to eat dinner, a noodle dish, salad, edamame and milk tea to drink for me.
9.30pm. Bed time and lights are out by 10.00.
Pictures tomorrow
Picking up right where I left off from the last post (only about eight hours into my 13h22m flight), I’m still sitting on the plane. I end up watching another movie – The Adjustment Bureau. I thoroughly enjoy it – it does have Matt Damon in it after all. After the movie I eat another plane meal consisting of Teriyaki “chicken” a salad and a pack of Milano cookies. I get in about an hour and half of sleep then we finally arrive. Consensus from the team is the flight went very quickly even though most of us got little to no sleep.
Upon our arrival we gather as a group, have a quick toilet break where, like the other guys, am in awe of the technology in the toilet (restroom), especially the hand dryer – it’s paper thin and has neon blue lights all over it. We proceed to customs whereby now everyone else has gone through so we have no lines to contend with. From there we head to baggage and then to customs. Outside customs one guy asks me to take his picture next to the Welcome to Japan. I proceed to do so only to be interupted by a Usain Bolt paced police officer yelling to me, “No Pictcha!” My bad. I promise I was only trying to get the sign and nothing about how well you accept my declaration form. From here we begin a crazy game of follow the leader through the airport; first to take our bags to a van where two guys have the lucky job of driving our luggage six plus hours to where we will be staying. Then back into the airport to exchange money, buy tickets for the express train, buy our rail pass, board the express train and then ride that for forty-five minutes to Tokyo where we wait an hour before we board the Hayabusa (bullet train). It’s dark by now so we can’t see much. What we do see is a huge city still conserving energy and electricity. Once we get out of the city our speeds finally hit the 300km/h we heard so much about. Two hours later we arrive in Furukawa where we are picked up by another couple guys in vans then head to the house where we are staying until Saturday morning. We meet a few others, talk about the agenda for the morning (dressed, breakfast and ready to go at 7.30). The meeting adjourns then we get ready for bed. I skype Sarah and Brynleigh to tell them good night, get ready for bed then have a poor night of sleep, getting up in the middle of the night, not just once, but twice to pee, ready to call it a night at 3.45 but knowing I can’t.
I’m calling this post complete since I am falling asleep between sentences. Tomorrow I will write about our first day of work, the mayhem we witnessed and all we accomplished on little rest.
As some of you may be aware, I left for Japan on 29 October. I am going with eleven other members from our church – Gateway – www.gatewaypeople.com This is the church’s second trip this year to help out with relief work and clean up after the earthquake and tsunami to ravage the Northern part of Japan this past March; March 11, 2011 to be exact. It isn’t the only devastating natural disaster to occur on the eleventh of March the past few years. I don’t find it coincidental.
I’d like to tell you a bit about how I came to sit on this plane and what I am looking for and expecting the next ten days. Before I do, I will make a plug for the Samsung Galaxy Tab that is allowing all this to happen. See, I’m still mezmerized by technology and what it is capable of; how it’s possible to hit some keys 30,000 feet above ground and then when I touch down (and get to wi-fi) you will be able to read it. Buy one, they’re ridiculously awesome. I don’t know ten percent what it can do, but what I do know is great. My beautiful wife is the technology guru at our house and she likes to remind me of it from time to time…I am getting off on an early tangent, but that the way my writing go (hats off to Wash and the Rangers. I wish for the city and for themselves they could have won, but alas it didn’t happen. Life goes on and more important things are to take place).
Back to the real story. December 19, 2006. My first nephew was born that day. I can’t believe he is going to be five in less than two months. I can’t believe my own daughter is going to be three in January. I miss her like crazy already and it has only been about nine hours since I left Dallas (it has been more than twelve since she and her brother and Sarah dropped me off. Yes, Barkley came too). It didn’t help that I watched The Help a few hours ago and saw a little girl the same age as Brynleigh. Good movie by the way – it’s hard for me to believe we treated people this way, and I suppose some people still do. Anyway, Sarah and I also got our best Christmas tree that morning. We had gone from fifteen thousand in savings to 40k in debt in in eighteen months. We literally could not afford a Christmas tree, but we got one almost twelve feet tall for five dollars that day. It was all alone waiting for us to take it home so it could continue its slow death, albeit a smashingly good looking one. Finally, the third thing that happened that day was I was offered a job….at a bank. Why am I telling all of this? Well after almost five grueling years of giving to the bank at the expense of my wife and daughter, they decided they wanted to let me go. It’s laughable the events that transpired but in the big picture it is something we had been hoping and praying for. Our prayers were answered, just not in the way we expected them to be. I find that’s usually the way it go.
My last day working for the bank was August 11, five months to the day after the destruction began in Japan. We were on our last week of hosting our Japanese student, Risa. It was the day after our ninth wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary love, I’m fired. Queue Donald Trump’s hand moving toward me. It was also a day in which so much weight was lifted off my shoulders. Knowing I was not in control wasn’t easy, but it felt so right. It still does. I haven’t felt so much peace about my work situation ever. I have dealt with this before but this time I was able to let go of it immediately; last time it took a year to forgive all who were involved. I don’t know what will come of it but it is one thing I expect to gain insight on while on this trip. It’s hard to be away from the girls, but it’s good to get away so I can hear what’s next for all of us. I couldn’t have gone on this trip if I were still at the bank. I probably would have never been offered the trip, let alone all expenses paid if I were still there.
I am excited to see how much I have grown since my last trips abroad, and I don’t mean the thirty pounds more I weigh from when I went to Australia. I want to see if the leadership position I had at the bank carries over to this trip – not that I’m in a leadership role but more that when the going gets tough, I get going (not going away….you, hopefully, know what I mean). I’m excited to be a part of a team of people who are willing to get out of the routine of life to go help people half a world away. I’m excited to be with people who have the same mind set and vision Sarah and I do. I, too, look forward to seeing Risa (hopefully) so that I can give her a big hug from her Mommy back in the States. I’m most excited for my next trip, when I will have my girls with me and we can do this as a family.
I can’t promise future blogs will be as long and informative, but they should have pictures!
The Seifipour Family 