We were able to organize this trip thanks to the fundraiser event with auction on 3/11 earlier this year.
The journey started with a smaller group of volunteers and about the same amount of nadia core members on Friday night from Shinjuku.
The bus drove through the night and we arrived safely early morning in Ishinomaki. We could get another few hours of sleep, laying down in the Minato community center.
Saturday morning we split into several groups:
Gentaro and Joji visited Chiba-san to plan about the Ogatsu playground build in September
Sakiko and volunteer friends went shopping for ingredients and then prepared crepes in the Minato community center kitchen for the Sunday festival
Koss and a fellow volunteer drove to Kamome school for disabled kids where we built a playground at the end of 2014; they did some maintenance and weeding around the play-set
Morgan and Rolf took some volunteers to the annual grass and weed cutting around the Atsuta shrine. Fortunately we got reinforced by locals helpers
It was raining quite hard the whole Saturday but on Sunday it luckily cleared up, right on time for the Sanja kids festival.
The preparations and ceremony started early Sunday morning.
By the time the kids and adults in their blue happis (shirts), carrying the mikoshi (portable shrine), shouting ‘yoisa yoisa’, came back from their rounds around the neighborhood the following entertainment was ready:
giant “magic” bubbles (not so gigantic in the picture)
the shovel guitar players proved again that it doesn’t need strings to play the shovels
the Ogatsu taiko drummers took it away with their outstanding powerful performance
the Okinawa performers sang and played traditional songs with their shamisen guitars
fishing water balloons and toys which turned into a big splash zone in the end – how fun was that!
various foods like yakisoba and others from the local community as well as crepes from team nadia
THANK YOU, supporters of the 3/11 memorial dinner and volunteers to make a difference by supporting this great festival event. We participated the 5th time this year and its always great fun as you can see on the pictures above.
Following the success of the event last year, the members of Nadia were excited to run the event again with the ambition to make the event bigger and better. An important accomplishment this year year was the connection to the local Hikarigaoka community via the community liaison Hiroshi Asemi. We expanded the event with the addition of a soccer field and 2 local Japanese soccer teams, which meant more fun and time play for all participating kids. In addition, we also had a special guest, Manuel Belleri from AC Milan soccer school who performed as a soccer clinic coach to the delight of all
Soccer matches commenced at 9am and ran throughout the day, through lunch and right up until dinner. Teams that were not playing on the fields had the opportunity to attend AC Milan’s soccer clinics, play in the pool and cheer other playing teams between their own matches.
Both the Tohoku teams and Kanto teams were exhausted from a full day of activities by the evening and retired to the gymnasium where they would dorm for the night in preparation for the 2nd day of soccer matches. A total of 130 kids stayed over at Aoba.
The Tokyo West competing against Shishiori FC at Harunokaze field
nadia
After three and a half years Ochakko is being closed down and the structure is being donated to a local group. While it is a bit sad perhaps, as we leave behind some good memories, in the end we should realize that it was not the building that made it memorable but the people we met and the things that were done at Ochakko. We should also be glad that the needs of the community are evolving and moving forward and we can be proud that through Ochakko, we at nadia, were able to be a small part of that process.
As I said at the ceremony, the building Ochakko was simply a building, but Ochakko was about the people and the community. Many thanks to Kayo, Team 3-11, and all others that made it what it was. We hope that even if the building is gone, we can continue building on the relationships we have created and can continue to help the community going forward.
