An ayoda in Noto

  A brief note We are back in the US after our ten day excursion to Ishikawa, Japan. I’m up at 5 in the morning not because of jet lag, but because Peter and I shared a cold and I’m waiting for the decongestant to kick in. I nonetheless wanted to thank you for reading this blog, and for your prayers and support of our volunteer efforts. More thoughts about this year’s trip forthcoming, so please stay tuned.

  July 4 It turns out we didn’t return to the house we were helping clear out for demolition yesterday. Instead, we were sent to another building a few miles away, also set for demolition but had its own challenges. We cleared out a second story residence, mostly consisting of kitchen goods and children’s play items. That in itself was challenging. An added feature of this job was the stairs leading to the second floor were badly corroded, so we had to use a stepladder to carry goods down the stairs. The good news is the family did a good job of packing goods. However it meant some heavy boxes had to be brought downstairs via the ladder that served as our makeshift steps. So that’s me slowly sliding down a full box of items from the second floor to where Aaron was standing. It required some patience to keep the box (and me) from tumbling down. Fortunately, there were no incidents to either the goods or the persons involved. By the way, the moniker on the box (note it says “GOON”) i...

After a couple of days breaking down concrete walls, we were moved to the city of Nanao. Our task here is to move everything out of this house before it’s demolished. When we first arrived, the house didn’t look that damaged, however on closer inspection there are significant cracks that explain why the house was declared unsafe. Everything needs to be moved out. Peter is carrying some bedding to the truck which will dispose of whatever’s not being saved. We’re guessing the homeowners took with them their basics and relocated to safe housing. With the amount of items still left in the house, it’d be nearly impossible to try to clear out everything that needed to be disposed. It may be hard to tell from these photo, but you may be able to see some plastic bags filled with various items. The city of Nanao has rather strict rules about recycling. We had to bag items based upon what can be recycled and what will be simply incinerated. We even had to remove book covers and separate them fro...

  We thought we’d offer you a brief “behind the scenes” look at our time here in Japan’s Ichikawa Prefecture. Not particularly profound, but it offers a bit of our experience outside of the work. First off, we introduce you to the local Lawson  konbini  (convenience store). Most of our meals have been purchased here. We’ve no complaints, the food is rather good and not expensive.  Katsu  (breaded deep fried pork) appears to be the favorite, except for yours truly, who tends toward anything involving noodles, especially  soba  (buckwheat noodles). That’s a partial pic of the deli case. Note the variety of  musubi  (rice balls) which are a clear favorite. Nonetheless, we did indulge slightly. We found an  okonomiyaki  (Japanese omlette) restaurant, clearly a Mom & Pop operation. It was really good! Including dessert, the total tab for the three of us was about $25. And there’s no tipping in Japan. When we stayed here last year, th...