Monday, April 25, 2011 Thunder, Toys, and Little Boys

Last night Beth was thinking since it’s only her and me (Ken) and Mama and Papa Kitani (in the picture from a day later Mama and Papa Kitani are on the far right), that today we’ll tighten up our space in the dojo to make room for team members arriving soon.

But this morning she sees clear bright sunshine so we're thinking let’s make a run to give out the produce the Kitanis brought and throw in whatever else we can fit in the little K truck and their Odyssey (suv wagon, not van). We’ll lay out the blue sheet in a parking lot, so no need to bag vegetables, just halve the big ones. Papa lays out the tarps in the field to dry, Mama cuts the cabbages and pumpkins and Beth and I start putting water jugs and underwear, and toys and toilet paper on the truck (plus some wheelbarrows and shovels for cleaning up or giving away).

We’re loading the last of the food in the Odyssey as well as several boxes of clothes to fill up the truck and then CRACK! splits the air and we look up to see angry shades of gray. A flash and another crack echoes around us and I trot across the street to get the two tarps folded up so we won’t have soggy blue sheets. Beth says no, we need to tarp the boxes on the truck first. I’ll fold these up first I say (being the weather expert and all—I know it’s lightning, then thunder, then a few drops, then a gust of wind, and then the downpour—and we’re only at the few drops stage)—and I say then I’ll get the truck, but Beth not appreciating my vast base of knowledge thinks I’m an idiot and starts covering the truck.

So everything’s finally covered, then sure enough the downpour, so we pray for clearing skies for our distribution point and take a moment to eat a quick lunch. Sheets of rain. Prairie dwellers know it. Not so much Californians.

Looking from the dojo porch across the little valley of rice fields, I could track each curtain in the downpour as it marched from right to left. I tried to take a picture of it, but of course you have to take it in with all the senses.

We left in faith in the rain for Ishinomaki carrying a special cargo of rainsuits and tools for the ojisan (man) and obasan (aunty) whose house we helped clean out Saturday, ‘cause Beth first saw her carrying muddy gomi (trash) out into the rain wearing a white sweater bless her heart. Regrettably they were not home, but we saw where they’d cleaned some more, and we showed the Kitanis what we’d done, and we’ll be back on Wednesday.

Beth says you know where we haven’t been in a while, is the Watano ha train station, do you remember, where we met the deaf people. I didn’t remember because I hadn’t arrived in Japan yet. (Of course Chad and Beth arrived 4 days after the tsunami when the roads were impassable and everything was shambles and no one knew anything and no one had water and the team slept in vans and washed with soap and snow.) But when we get to the train station, another group is there so we drive around the block, and there’s the funeral home, it’s like across the tracks from the train station, which I didn’t notice the first time I was there. The rain was

gone, the parking lot was almost dry, everything went like clockwork, toys went quickly, and we saw some friends, like the kids that played in the

wheelchair at the grass field which Beth says is actually just a few blocks away (ed. note: these kids are the the Tomita family I described in the April 14 blog who after the tsunami floated with their mother on the tire for 18 hours. In one picture you see the kid with the dad whom they had no word of for 2 days. The cute boy making the peace sign in the other picture is their cousin).

And then Beth describes that first time at the train station people couldn’t say thank you enough, because we were one of the first groups to reach them, except for the one guy when Chad asked what he needed, he said you don’t have what I want, I want my son back—his three-year-old had been taken by the tsunami.
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Karate classes have resumed at the dojo, so out of caution for contagion and polluted mud we’re scrubbing tires and boots and rainsuits with disinfectant and wearing masks when we’re out of the cars, and washing hands after every stop. New group from Osaka arrived with supplies at midnight—Akihiro Shona, Yoshiuki Shiroya, Fifi (missionary kid from Pasadena when she’s in the states), Abigail, and Sachiko.

Did I mention that in Japan, running down the centerline of every sidewalk are tiles embossed with ridges and at the intersections bumpy patterns so blind people can safely navigate?

Did I mention that the K truck has no suspension?