It’s been nearly three weeks since I arrived in Japan, but I have yet to write anything about it outside of a few emails to friends and family, so hopefully this will be a better way of letting everyone know what I’m up to!
At this very moment, I’m riding the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Sendai, where I’ll be working for the next week providing on-the-ground relief to the evacuees and survivors of the tsunami (which sounds more glamorous than saying I’ll be working in a soup kitchen). I’ll also be working with Nael, the other AARJ (Association for Aid and Relief, Japan) intern. From the sound of it, the work in the soup kitchen will actually be quite intense, since we will be preparing meals in some of the hardest hit towns in Miyagi prefecture. I have been told the damage in Sendai is not so bad when compared to the rest of Miyagi, but considering that the far end of this scale is the complete annihilation of villages, “not so bad” may still be shocking for my first visit to the disaster zone.
I’ll be writing more about all of this later I’m sure (especially when I have a better idea of what I will be doing), so for now I think I’ll just give a quick review of what I’ve done up to this point. I’ll try to keep it short, since I can always write more about Tokyo when I return there next Friday.
So; the beginning. The flight in was uneventful as long as you completely ignore the fact that I arrived at the airport 15 minutes before the plane left, and only made it to the plane because the attendant allowed me to opt for a “no guarantee” boarding pass, and I miraculously sprinted through security in five minutes flat. In retrospect, it’s a good thing I only brought carry-ons. The trip to the dorm after I arrived was also fairly normal, except I ended up having no idea where it was, and also had never navigated in Japan before. Turns out, they use a completely different address system here that’s based on blocks rather than streets. In order to find the place you’re looking for, you have to know which city or town it’s in, but additionally you must know which “chome” (district) it’s in. Chome (pronounced cho-may) are a small segment of a town, generally made up of 10-25 blocks. Each block is numbered within that chome, and then each building is numbered within its particular block. I spend a good hour or so looking for the place, which ended up just being a 5 minute walk from the train station. Oh well; at least it was a learning experience.
Within the first week, I moved out of the dorm Harvard found for me into the same single-room apartment complex Nael is living in. The rent is about half of what I would have paid at the first place, which was reason enough to move, but I was also excited to move there because it meant moving from the quiet, residential area of Ota-ku to Takadanobaba, which is home to three of Tokyo’s universities, and is just two train stations away from Shinjuku, one of the most popular nightlife areas of Tokyo. I haven’t been out to really experience the nightlife yet, but last Sunday night I explored Ni-Chome, Sinjuku’s famous (and perhaps somewhat infamous) gay district, which supposedly has the largest concentration of gay bars in the world, with 200-300 crammed into just a few blocks on Ni-chome (Second Chome, for those of you who are paying attention). However, in typical Japanese fashion the bars are very small, and highly particularized, and often have a very specific crowd they’re looking for, which generally doesn’t included gaijin (foreigners). I checked out a few of the foreigner friendly ones I’d heard about, but on a Sunday night there wasn’t much going on. The only other time I’ve been out was two weekends ago when I went to a skateboard themed bar (specific bars aren’t limited to Ni-chome) with Nael, where we chatted with a few students, both gaijin and Nihonjin (Japanese). There was even some live music, which finally showed me that Japanese people listen to things beside J-pop. I also got to teach the bartender how to make a white Russian. It was delicious.
Before today, my work has consisted of working in the AARJ Tokyo office from 10am to 6pm every weekday, which I suppose makes it my first full-time job. Tokyo was over 300 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, so there’s not really any relief work to do in the city. Rather, the Tokyo office serves as the Headquarters for AARJ, and is responsible for administrative functions, including communicating with large Japanese and Foreign donors, PR, and managing the accounts of AARJ. As I suspected before arriving, AARJ has been putting our native English skills to use, having us check documents and letters written by the staff, as well as edit their blog, newsletters, and personalized thank-you notes to big international donors. Lately, we’ve been getting more responsibility to write the letters and reports ourselves, and last week I had the intimidating task of drafting a project proposal for Direct Relief International, which requested in total requested $400,000 for AARJ’s relief efforts.
That’s probably enough for an intro. Sorry to end it suddenly, but I realize I’ve been staring at this computer screen for a good hour now, and I think it’s time I put this away and take a look at the beautiful landscape rushing by outside. Who knows when I’ll get another chance.
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