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There are several groups which have been making great contribution to nadia activity. Tokyo Canadians Hockey Club is one of them. They have been participating in Nadia activity since our very early stage. How many bags of muds were carried out by their leadership from huge Buddist temple last weekend..

The great one, Wayne Gretzky once said,

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. ”

They always know what we should do next…

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”

People may think that, at evacuation centers they already got enough supply for their temporal life, and they don’t need any thing anymore.

The answer is No.

Imagine when tsunami hit beautiful Tohoku land, people had to evacuate without carrying anything with them from their house , and it was chilling winter. Soon they have received winter supplies; like sweaters, down jackets, winter blankets, and winter socks.

And now humid and hot summer is arriving at Ishinomaki. And they don’t have any summer supply. They evacuated to Minato elementary school with their hands free. None of them could bring personal belongings out from house.

We heard the needs of 300 summer blankets, and thanks to generous friends and colleagues, we could deliver to them on 22/May.

Your financial support will be delivered directly to people at Ishinomaki by Nadia.

Please keep supporting people at Ishinomaki.

During Golden week, you might have heard through TV that there were too many volunteers at Tohoku, and they didn’t get enough work to do.

I imagine lots of people might have wanted to join volunteer activity but  many hasitated, because they didn’t want to be nuisance.

Is it true that we have enough volunteers? The answer is NO. At least where we are working, at Ishinomaki area, there are so many houses to clean, and the number of needs are increasing.

On 8, may, the last day of golden week, we could only form one team, but all veterans. We were supposed to clean a store house and an office floor in the morning and a house in the afternoon.

Our task seemed to be difficult for small number of volunteers, but fortunately, 4 professional construction workers offered to join our team, and we completed cleaning in 4 hours! As soon as we finished, we hurried to next house to clean.

Before you hesitate, contact us. We always need your hands.

Dear all,

Two months ago at noon. Who could have imagined the scenes we can still see in Ishinomaki today? None of our NADIA members did, and none of us intended to have to take concrete actions. Nonetheless, we all somehow got shocked by the situation and decided to try to help and support them.

Two months have past. TV programmes are not broadcasting tsunami topics as often as before, but this doesn’t mean people there are not suffering anymore. Still many houses are left damaged, many people are still living in schelters.

Many clocks at Ishinomaki still points at 3:50p.m., the time tsunami hit the city. They lost many loving family/friends, houses and precious remories, which may not be returned to them. But we ‘d like to believe they don’t loose their hope and dream if we keep giving our hands and support.

Today, 2 months after the tragedy, please save 10 minutes of your time to think what you can do for them, and let’s pray for them together.

And most importantly, let’s go and give your actual hands to them.

In Japan, instead of Easter holiday, we are in the middle of holiday season, called “Golden Week”, which started from 29th/April.

Japanese are well known as hard workers at office, and for us, GW is the time to relax and recharge our energy. Some spends time with family, some goes overseas, some goes in a mountain to enjoy fresh early summer air.

Here is a story of people who decided to spend their holiday with Naida, with people at Ishinomaki. Our trip schedule was rather hard, spending night in a bus after hardworking week.

28/April(Thu)

23:00 Shinjuku

Most of us worked until evening, went home, took quick shower, grabbed boots and helmet and masks, and hurried to the meeting point. We were a group of multi-nationality, but working in Japan, we are used to be punctual, all gathered on time!

Team-Nadia, here we go!

29/April(Fri)

8:30 Ishinomaki

Again, we arrived at Ishinomaki on time, unload our baggages, and changed to working out fit. A bit nervous and shocked to see the reality. Some lost his words, some tried to hide their upset.

After briefing, each group went to houses where they were assigned. Each group were well mixed with female/male, veterans/un-experienced, JPN speakers/ENG speakers. 50 days after Tsunami, many houses still remained untouched. Most of us couldn’t sleep well in a bus, but no one complained seeing how people enduring under this situation.

Sakura survived tsunami and welcomed us at their garden.

15:00~15:30 Finish work

Some group completed cleaning, and some promised to come back next day, depending on house condition.

When we met house owner in the morning, they were a little shy so as we were, but at the end of the day, all of us became like family, promised to keep helping as long as they needed, and promised to visit them when they really returned to their life in the future.

17:00 Matsushima

Matsushima is a group of islands near Ishinomaki. There are some 260 tiny islands (shima) covered in pines (matsu) – hence the name – and is ranked as one of the Three most beautiful views of japan  .

Despite the proximity of Matsushima to the Tsunami, the area was protected by the islands and suffered little damage. They were damaged by earthquakes, but tried to be recovered before GW, and they just reopened their ryokan, we were the first guests after earthquakes!

Open air hot spring the best view in Japan on my back…

30/April(Sat)

7:30 Departure to Ishinomaki

8:30-15:00

Some continued work of previous day, some were assigned to new house. On 2nd day, no one needed to be told what to do, we all worked proactively, taking extra caution to avoid injury. There were broken glasses and nails and spikes everywhere.

One thing I noticed living in a metropolitan city like Tokyo where we often don’t know who’s living our next door is, here in Ishinomaki, we exchange greeting everyone, everyone show our sincere appreciation for their commitment both in words and in attitude.

1/May(Sun)

Some of us enjoyed after work beer too much the night before, I saw many were taking aspirin at breakfast table..

One more work before going back to Tokyo.

And as an important mission during GW, we delivered 1200 pairs of brand new shoes to Ishinomaki and Watari-cho. A generous company let us use a truck for free and volunteers delivered  them driving for 30 hours going up and down.

12:00 Finish work

13:00 Departure to Tokyo

In exchange of our crew, 17 Nadia crew arrived from Tokyo, and 15 more coming next day. They took over our mission, and we left Ishinomaki.

Despite the fact that we had very tough days doing physical work, we are somehow refreshed, recharged our energy.

 Having a break a few times on our way back to Tokyo, I bought a famous Miyagi prefc. sweets made with green beans.

20:00 Arrived at Shinjuku

 72 hours ago, we were total strangers to each other, but after spending time together at Ishinomaki, we all became comrades. We hugged and promised to see each other at Ishinomaki soon.

This is how our GW became literally Golden….

22/April(fri)

15:00 : Departure for Miyagi.

According to weather forecast, we’ll expect some rain during weekend, not cheerful condition for house cleaning. But we still have hundreds of houses to clean. Team-Nadia, c’est parti!

19:30 : Arrived at Akiu-onsen

Tonight lodge, Iwanuma-ya. Famous onsen made me relaxed after 4h30m drive. And we found great soba-restaurant in front of ryokan. The owner prepared us a fresh made soba with tempura. And offered various dishes and rice for free, this place is definitely to come back!

We went to bed early for next day’s activity…

23/April(Sat)

07:00 : Departure hotel

09:00 : Arrived at Ishinomaki Minato elementary school

After briefing with all 47 crew, we are divided into several group, each group went to houses which were hit by Tsunami. Our team went a house close to Minato school. the weather condition wasn’t so good, but our motivation was very high, eye witnessing the power of natural disaster… All we want is that they can go back to their house and re-start their life as soon as possible. To move out a rotten piano took us lots of physical energy, but very glad to know owner still has a beautiful grand piano at other place so that one day she can enjoy playing it. We had a lunch break at Minato school and kept working in the afternoon until 16:00. We couldn’t finished all the work, it remained a store house to be cleaned, but we promised that we would come back as soon as possible.( And we came back next day!)

Her neighbor kindly let us wash our hands and boots, since they had a water well, we never appreciated water so much..

19:00 : Back to Akiu-onsen

There’s  nothing better than onsen after physical work for whole day …

20:00 : Dinner time!

Get some energy for next day..

Positive energy come from good food and good sleep.

23/April(sun) Easter day

Another full day work before going back to Tokyo

Yesterday’s rain still remained on a road, water came up until knee high.. A hundred meter walk took us 10minutes. But it was a clear sunny day. Tohoku spring day really cheers us up.

Today is Easter day, it’ christian holiday and family gather at home and have a feast all together, but seeing a manu at Minato elementary school shelter on this day, I felt the needs of immediate help.

15:00 : finish the work, and going back to Tokyo

On the way back to Tokyo, we stopped at Nasukohgen to have a little break, and there we saw a beautiful rainbow… We believed this was a good sign.

When we arrived at home after 6 hours drive, I was exhausted, but somehow I was full of positive energy. And totally motivated for coming week.

I’ll be off for Miyagi-ken during golden week vacations, can’t wait to lift more wet tatamis….

April 15th, Tokyo

5:15… Akihabara station. Half asleep I meet my friends organizing the trip. We will be trying to help a bit for 2 days in Ishinomaki, Miyagi. We split the helmets between cars, hand over shovels and wheelbarrows and head North, overthere where Nuclear Powerplants and giant waves live on TV.

9:20… nice conversation in the car, too much water, we have a toilet break at the Asaka Service area in the vicinity of Koriyama, the closest point to the Fukushima reactors. My Geiger counter indicates a worrying 1.88 micro Sievert/hr on the parking lot. One of our friends is a bit nervous, it is down to 0.35 inside the building, hardly an issue.

12:00… our GPS shows a peaceful blue area to the right of the screen… the name 石巻  (Ishinomaki) shows up, we’ll be there in a few minutes. The landscape around us is mostly normal. It is hard to tell that a disaster hit the area.

12:05… a few hundreds meters further… we turn right and suddenly enter a different world. Beirut in the 80s… a war zones reveals itself to our shocked eyes and leaves us speechless. On the other side of the bridge a blue boat sits between houses, some buildings lie on their side between huge piles of debris and lines of workers wearing helmets walk along the sides of the streets to some unknown destination. Few people unrelated to the rescue effort are to be seen. We drive slow.

12:10… we finally reach the school ground where work is going to be distributed by the local volunteers. 2 cars are lying in the swimming pool but that sounds almost normal. We are close to the river beds but still 500m away from the shore… we cannot imagine the situation on the sea front. A quick check of the Geiger counter confirms our belief, the level is down to 0.1 micro Sievert/hr, same as Tokyo. We dress, wear our industrial masks, bullet proof safety glasses and start working in the school ground per the indication of our charismatic leader.

15.00… we finish cleaning up the drain system of the school and head for assignment #2. 3 volunteers having arrived from Nagoya after a 14 hours night bus ride decide to join forces with us. We walk through the village once more. Same feeling of desolation, I don’t have the strength to think about the consequences in terms of human lives. A large truck is parked in the garden of a house on the way, resting on a concrete wall, still lifted 1 meter above ground. We will be helping the owners of a large house by the river. Adjacent to the house is a public pavilion used for events. It looks almost normal until you see the cracked concrete base and collapsed flooring. Access is prevented by a strange mix of debris brought from the river just 30m away. We will be clearing the access and removing debris from a storage area that cranes can’t get to.

16:30… we are already 30 mins late but cannot seem to be able to stop working… there is so much that remains to be done. We know our friends are waiting and must start to be worried. We end up leaving a bit later after a warm exchange with the house owners. Going back to our accommodation in Sendai takes 2 hours. We will try to regain some strengths tonight before another day of physical labour.

We are exhausted, a bit depressed by the extend of the work that is left to do, but somehow happy to have contributed a tiny little bit.