Settling into Sandy (my sister) and Brent’s apartment in Kojima, Okayama Prefecture. It’s the last day of English classes for their school before Golden Week. Sandy invites me to share my experiences with her 6:30pm Bible study, and Brent with his 7:30 and 8:30 English classes. Someone asks me how what I saw, compared with what I expected to see—assuming I had watched all the coverage on the news. However since I don’t watch TV or Youtube, I’m probably the only person on the globe that didn’t see extensive coverage of the tsunami. For me, the most striking things were the houses that were jammed into each other and the cars in bizarre places and crazy angles.
So I took dozens of pictures of those things, but I fear in an abstract mode with something akin to curiosity—“Oh, I’ve got to get this cool shot.” But actually walking through the houses, seeing small personal items, and then hearing the stories are what made the suffering real. You see the incredible force of the water in the massive damage, and the items high in the trees or on the bluffs, but it’s something that you still can’t really get your mind around. A few things stand out like the clock on the school stopped at 2:46 or the pots and pans in the cabinet looking over the missing dining room. . .so I guess I just return to the faces of all the people we served.
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Dorky bikes, part 2. I’ve now been properly informed: they look like American girls’ bikes from the 60’s. But they’re not girls’ bikes; they’re what everyone rides. The brand new, off the shelf bikes are the same basic model. They are called mamachari(nko), so technically they are “mommy bikes,” but nobody thinks of them that way.
Did I mention there are no trash cans in public buildings? Or gas stations? Or anywhere? You’re expected to carry home whatever you brought. But the social engineering backfires because since that’s such a hassle, in some places people just drop trash on the ground.
No dumpsters at the apartment complex. The enclosure is unlocked between 6 and 9 am on Monday and Thursday for you to place whatever can’t be recycled in a clear plastic bag and set it on the ground. If you miss these time slots, you have to wait until the next time. In some cities you have to buy special plastic bags and put your name on them.
Recycle day is once a month. You and your neighbors each take their monthly turn standing by the recycle bins while everyone brings their recyclables and compostables out and you make sure they go in the right bins. There’s another day of the month when odd things like broken plates and cloth and steel are picked up. There’s a poster to help you keep track.
If you want to dispose of a TV or monitor or bicycle or furniture, you go to the Post Office and look through a book for the listing of your model of TV which gives the disposal fee. You pay the fee, get the form in triplicate, and take the item to the recycle/disposal center with your paperwork to show that you paid and then turn it in. So can you guess what people do instead? Each morning you see that mysteriously, TVs and bicycles with missing license stickers have appeared in the drainage and irrigation ditches. Oh well, when it works, it works.
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