Video of snowventures is coming but needed to get this one down first. So I start at the end of my latest (and probably last) Japan trip. After some new places, familiar ski hills but new out of bounds adventures, fresh faces and old friends... a friend of mine suggested, rather than meet up for my last few days at a snow resort, we head to Ishinomaki, Japan and join up with http://itsnotjustmud.com, a non-profit grass-roots organisation based based in the Miyagi prefecture that works in the Tohoku region.
So what happened here?
I could talk a lot about it but really, just watch this video for a snapshot of life in Ishinomaki since the Tsunami. Some characters in it make an appearance in this story. Heck, shout out to Paulyj who I met shooting the next installment. How odd a connection life can throw at you sometimes.
The first day was spent travelling on the first shinkansen to Sendi. Sunrise rolling along the earth at 300 km/h eating ekiben. Everything so Japanese, connected, modern and efficient.
One minute you are in the pounding metal heart of Tokyo jumping on board a train that should exist in the future. Plus 90 minutes you have to get off a local train because it can not travel through mud.
Once in Ishinomaki, we went to the volunteers house to dump our stuff then straight to the days worksite, meeting a great mix of people putting some insulation down for a future old folks/community centre.
After we ran out of insulation it was back to the house and then a self guided bike tour around the neighbourhood with the lads from Camp Zama. There is a devastating, surreal and powerful nature to what greets you block after block. It just didn't compute in my mind. No dots. No connection.
And this long after the disaster, you still have that sense of 'where do we begin'. I was talking to a guy in the Army from New Orleans, had served in some hot countries (think middle east) and even he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
We your number is up, it's up. God's calling you and ain't nothing you can do
I immediately wondered where Gods hand can be found in this? I don't think I'll ever understand or accept any theology that attempts to explain such pain and suffering as the work of the divine. All I know is, we are all given the grace to take life on, and we have the gift of each other to help make that a road worth walking. It is really all we can do.
What he said was, in many ways, an army perspective of life. And it makes sense. Imagine living through environments where you kill and risk of being killed. For sanity you have to accept there is so much outside our control in a life like that. The universal is this. You might not believe in anything greater than yourself, but ultimately some decisions are not yours to make and all you have is grace to deal with what life throws at you. Even if it's an IED that has your name on it. Or a wave that will kill you or change your life forever.
At the end of the ride and a good days work it was Onsen time! As we drove through the night the talk turned to the tragic loss of ones once close. Our driver opened up quickly about her uncle. The missing, the dead and the ones still out there. Lost In the sea and beyond any grave. The ordeals of survival and the role (or lack their of) of government. At a visual level, you can see the scars straight away around the town. You still find clocks, bent out of shape but all reading the same time. But I was also struck about the openness of conversation between the Japanese that are trying to rebuild lives. You know how they say you can tell where someone is from in Japan by the way they talk (not just accent, but use of humour or lack there of). I think Ishninomaki could be the first place in Japan to develop and openness and transparency in how people relate to each other. The interpersonal change is made only possible through losing something / everything you once held dear. It was presently confronting to see this openness happen time and time again in conversation.
Seeing the school, it's burnt out remains. I struggled, the thoughts of kids surviving a earthquake, some even the tsunami, only to be burnt alive. Death in a fire surrounded by water. All sense is lost as you look at the building. The car yards, the buildings with cars still slammed into them. The logs sent down the rivers day before, only to became spears through people and houses.
The onsen cleaned away the mud of the first day. I sat in the outside bath as the snow started to fall at first lightly, then bigger and bigger flakes, hitting my upper body like bullets. I love snow, I'm at home in it's coldness but also wonder. It transforms spaces and places. I note that I always fall in love in Winter.
Everyone was quiet on the car trip back, bodies tired but a strange numbness over a group of people 48hrs old but somehow connected. As we sat under the Kotatsu and ate an america style meal (in honour of the Camp Zama boys), in the ram-shackled but in it's on way charming house, we all found ourselves turning in early for the night.
The unheated room (think ply wood walls with no insulation) was filled with everyone on the floor, beanies and thermals on. I just knew I'd sleep well. I'm built for the cold, this type of cold particularly. It was the deepest sleep I'd had for months. It turned out the be the coldest too. I awoke to my breath causing my makeshift pillow (the old t'shirt wrapped in a jumper trick hey) to be covered in a decent layer of iced up moisture. The breaths of my dreams frozen to my pillow. Yep, nights are cold. Imagine doing that in temporary housing for over a year. A lot of people still do around those parts. It's a cruel joke.
The next day was spent back at the house finishing off the insulation job. Everyone was good and just focussed on the task a hand. Hermitudes latest album was given its potential Japanese debut, some lovers and some haters. Day done, back to Onsen to clean up and calm down. In my time in Japan I managed onsen nearly every night, no matter where I was.
On the way back from the Onsen my friend wanted to do some omiyage for a couple who hosted an NYE party he attended last time he was up volunteering. The couple turned out to be most wonderful colourful old timers I've ever met. Hashimoto-san was a pocket dynamo of cooking energy. I think I saw her sit still for about two minutes out of the three hours of eating, talking, eating and me sitting on the toto.
I'd held back tears for most of the trip. It felt cheap for me to cry, I hadn't suffered any of this and I'd just wanted to play the role of random white person helping. But sometimes the pure honesty of someones story kicks you in the guts and makes your heart bleed.
When the quake hit, he rushed home to find his wife. Hashimoto wasn't at home, but he guessed she's be another house close by, as she was often looking after a old lady with Alzheimer's disease. So he rushed there and as he came in the door the first wave hit.
There begins three days in waste deep cold water, trying to move to stay warm. Trying to find food (some found in an upturned floating fridge) to keep feeding the elderly women. I'll never forget as he told us how they were worried for her but after the first day they got her to eat and just kept talking to her to keep her awake they felt positive, like she should make it.... only for her to stop talking early on the second morning before the sun had risen. He held his head down almost in shame, like he failed her. They spent the new two days with the floating body trying to not become one themselves.
Someone in the group asked, why didn't anyone come for them? “We had no family in the area” was the response. “The army couldn't get in, if you didn't have family you were fucked” said another long time volunteer. You're sitting there thinking things just don't add up, but that's the point. It's not an idea world, we are talking 1000kms of destruction and a nuclear disaster. But really that just the beginning. Once they survived the first three days, their story skip forward to candidly talk about those around them who have committed suicide since those early days. The statistics are shocking. I will not repeat the figures here but in a place like this I can see how that is such a realistic possibility. Watch someone walk back and forth from the shore line to the destroyed tsunami wall. You ask those around you what they are doing and someone replies, “they are looking for someone.”
Hashimoto-san said she still has yet to cry, but the emotion she does feel is happiness when she see's people coming to help. It's interesting, Ishinomaki never had many foreigners visitors. Since the tsunami, a heap have come to help. For once it means that there might be a place in Japan where we don't get it wrong and act like idiots.
Sleep came quickly again that night, deep dreams that cannot be talked about.
The next say it was off to help Fugita-sun (yep that guy in the first video) who had put the call out for some help. Due to the joys of bureaucracy and generally crazy decision making, he suddenly had to abandon the temporary house and community centre he'd been squatting and operating out of and go back across the street to the house were he lost so much.
Was a straight up job of gutting out stuff from the first floor so the volunteer carpenters could start work on rebuilding his parents and his place. But nothing is ever that straight forward. As we began work Fugita-san started to go through he possessions, seeing what he wanted to keep. You are busy throwing things out only to find photo's and other personal effects. Tapping someone on the shoulder and handing them a bit of their past, so they can have the unenviable task of making a decision to bag it or keep it, really made me think about what we hold dear.
He also wanted to move a tree which was a great team effort.
Fugita-sun is an amazing guy.
In the midst of this pain he finally found his car insurance papers so he could finally get his money back for a car, like all others, long since gone, probably half way up a mountain or a few leagues under the sea. Or pilled high in that makeshift destroyed car yard on the way out of the city. Some money was also found. And a few good records. I'm sure it would all be happily traded in an instant for his family back. But you take this moment and make it, laugh for the small things and they lead you on.
This whole thing has made me wonder what strength it takes to keep on keeping on. Not everyone has it in them, I know deep down there is a strength in me that endures and and I hope I am never truly tested on it. Not in a way these souls I was blessed to meet have. I did not want to leave, there is always more to do but time is time. But I had covered more miles in heart in three days then a journey to the sun and back.
Thank you Ishinomaki, It's not just mud and everyone I met. Thank you for let me in, even for just a few days.
Saddle up, burning paper heart
0 Comments Published by nico on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 at 7:20 am.
- Hazelton by Justin Vernon
- World Spins Madly On by The Weepies
- Unfurling of young leaves by Tomoyoshi Date
- Caught A Long Wind by Feist
- Pretty Girls (Acoustic) by Spit Syndicate
- Midnight City by M83
- Lotus Flower (Jacques Greene Remix) by Radiohead
- Crystalfilm by Little Dragon
- Little Pirouette by Trent Grenell
- Shake It Out by Florence + The Machine
- Dig Your Own Hole by Gotye
In honor of the recent early snow falls in Australia I give you a look into a trip I did in Feb.
Sorry about the interlacing issues.. to many different cameras used (and not enough skill at video editing software on my part).
Sorry about the interlacing issues.. to many different cameras used (and not enough skill at video editing software on my part).
So the Internets hey.
I heard this song a few days ago. Reminded me of the excitement I felt the first time I dialed into a BBS. In fact it just reminded me of a good portion of my time spent in the early 1990s. From downloading and uploading files, sharing comments on a shared board, talking to people about new ideas and seeing picture of a naked man and lady engaging in something that could be mistaken for sex. Not to forget my attempts at ASCII art, emphasis on the attempt aspect of that. Then my world was exploded open with a favourite BBS of mine offering this new thing called netmail (FidoNet) . I would dial in at least once a week to check my mail. I had made friends with a fellow in South Africa who helped me with a technical problem and we would regularly exchange hints and tips for games.
For forward a decade or two and what I did not know was this was my precursor to ubiquitous computing. My weekly dose of connection with everything outside the space I was physically in now travels as part of me as I navigate this thing called daily life. Be it iphone or whatever. As someone who has danced with the digital marketing world, call this perspective whatever you want... but I know its arrived.
Content is king. We (western, rich blabla) have entered a phase were the idea is being realised that computing is now working away (in some ways quietly) to mediate our interpersonal corrections, working life, driving, musical tastes, geographical routings, patters of consumption etc. Our devices are pushing content. But think about the word content. It sounds so benign. I think web content, like any content, is anything but a value neutral concept. When it comes to the majority of popular services (a la facegooglebooktwitter) we have really been handing over our lives in chunks for years. And the mirror looking back has become part of an augmented reality, a heaving neon distraction with dollar values. Relationships mediated, marketed, histories recorded and patterns of consumption found. More and more pervasive. Where computing goes, market(s/ing) follow.
"No, but you forget, I can choose?"
The permission based argument is a false hope. There is an increasing link between a passive yet pervasive digital world and a reduction in your "public space/sphere" rights. There are photos of you on facegooglebooktwitter you don't know about. You have been documented and you are a market object being targeted and you did not tick the agree box.
And yet in all of this we are excited about this new augmented reality. So by adding a computing layer to what we experience via our senses, it is a richer experience? But look for long enough through the hour glass, that additional layer becomes (a better) reality (right)? So it turns out that Baudrillard was right, extending on the fact that the Gulf War did not take place, the map is becoming the real.
And it will be here that a generation will start what I will call the slow internet movement. Not a rejection of services offered (even with their terms of disservice to the public good) or the use of dial up but a new frame of reference that;
Lets talk in a few years.
I heard this song a few days ago. Reminded me of the excitement I felt the first time I dialed into a BBS. In fact it just reminded me of a good portion of my time spent in the early 1990s. From downloading and uploading files, sharing comments on a shared board, talking to people about new ideas and seeing picture of a naked man and lady engaging in something that could be mistaken for sex. Not to forget my attempts at ASCII art, emphasis on the attempt aspect of that. Then my world was exploded open with a favourite BBS of mine offering this new thing called netmail (FidoNet) . I would dial in at least once a week to check my mail. I had made friends with a fellow in South Africa who helped me with a technical problem and we would regularly exchange hints and tips for games.
For forward a decade or two and what I did not know was this was my precursor to ubiquitous computing. My weekly dose of connection with everything outside the space I was physically in now travels as part of me as I navigate this thing called daily life. Be it iphone or whatever. As someone who has danced with the digital marketing world, call this perspective whatever you want... but I know its arrived.
Content is king. We (western, rich blabla) have entered a phase were the idea is being realised that computing is now working away (in some ways quietly) to mediate our interpersonal corrections, working life, driving, musical tastes, geographical routings, patters of consumption etc. Our devices are pushing content. But think about the word content. It sounds so benign. I think web content, like any content, is anything but a value neutral concept. When it comes to the majority of popular services (a la facegooglebooktwitter) we have really been handing over our lives in chunks for years. And the mirror looking back has become part of an augmented reality, a heaving neon distraction with dollar values. Relationships mediated, marketed, histories recorded and patterns of consumption found. More and more pervasive. Where computing goes, market(s/ing) follow.
"No, but you forget, I can choose?"
The permission based argument is a false hope. There is an increasing link between a passive yet pervasive digital world and a reduction in your "public space/sphere" rights. There are photos of you on facegooglebooktwitter you don't know about. You have been documented and you are a market object being targeted and you did not tick the agree box.
And yet in all of this we are excited about this new augmented reality. So by adding a computing layer to what we experience via our senses, it is a richer experience? But look for long enough through the hour glass, that additional layer becomes (a better) reality (right)? So it turns out that Baudrillard was right, extending on the fact that the Gulf War did not take place, the map is becoming the real.
And it will be here that a generation will start what I will call the slow internet movement. Not a rejection of services offered (even with their terms of disservice to the public good) or the use of dial up but a new frame of reference that;
- Pull rather then push based services
- High value placed on mindfulness. Stop and be in the now.
- A rejection of a mediate relationship with reality
- Shared life stories remain the property of those telling them in the commons
- Those hearing them in the commons attribute to those relationships
Lets talk in a few years.
scatter those seeds
between them rocks
and this early rising sun
our roots became twisted
never settled
we're easily undone
from birth this earth broken
it gives to no-one
give this strength, oh god
your lone soldier's moving on
never needing
always wanting
your love (x3)
so it is here
we begin to become one
red dust, white snow
distant sounds
north of babalyon
let's head east
west
my shoulder
lean on
we'll make those roots yield
as two plus two
becomes one
give this strength, oh god
your lone soldier's moving on
never needing
always wanting
your love (x3)
so it is here
we begin to become one
two plus two by http://nickelass.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.
Based on a work at nickelass.blogspot.com.
between them rocks
and this early rising sun
our roots became twisted
never settled
we're easily undone
from birth this earth broken
it gives to no-one
give this strength, oh god
your lone soldier's moving on
never needing
always wanting
your love (x3)
so it is here
we begin to become one
red dust, white snow
distant sounds
north of babalyon
let's head east
west
my shoulder
lean on
we'll make those roots yield
as two plus two
becomes one
give this strength, oh god
your lone soldier's moving on
never needing
always wanting
your love (x3)
so it is here
we begin to become one
two plus two by http://nickelass.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.
Based on a work at nickelass.blogspot.com.
Machinery for the latest trip (in order of appearance):
All in two weeks. Holiday after this holiday?
