I must have slept REALLY well Monday night, because Tuesday morning I slept til 6:15am. Normally I’m up and about before 6! It was fine though since we don’t have anything to do until 7:45am. I got up to go outside to use the restroom and brush my teeth, and noticed that even at 6:30am about half the guys were still asleep. I suppose a lot of people had a rough Monday! I went back to my area to get changed for the day and the swelling had gone down a little bit from stubbing my toe. Thank goodness!
Went outside, had our morning meeting and radio taiso. This morning the exercises were lead by Chris and our own team leader Aska! For those who are curious what exactly these exercises are like, here’s a 15 second clip of Chris and Aska leading us:
After exercises, we headed back to the restaurant. We worked hard and finished the job by lunch! Oh yes, I was overjoyed! We put a lot of work into that place! The hardest part was definitely navigating our shoveling and sweeping between the foundation planks. No, it was the back pains from being bent over all day. Or the repetition, or layer after layer of mud… I just really didn’t care for this job! By the end of the week, after doing several jobs, this one was indeed my least favorite.
My team posing with the restaurant we just finished- me, Joji, Aska, Calum and Wesley.
We finished just in time for lunch, so we headed back feeling triumphant. There were some ominous clouds in the sky but we didn’t pay them much mind. We figured the afternoon sun would burn them off. It was about 78 degrees anyways.
Wesley was kind enough to make us lunch- hot dogs!
He also had a stash of orange juice. Now, I normally wouldn’t eat hot dogs and orange juice together. Somewhat of a funky combination. But that juice was so fruity, cold and fresh I just didn’t care! Delicious.
We somewhat dawdled during lunch. We lazed around in the kitchen room, chatting, relaxing. A reporter came in and introduced herself to us and took some pictures, not sure what specifically for. Perhaps I’ll ask someone in my group about that- it’d be nice to see how they turned out!
We finally got back into work clothes, and Ted led us not too far away (we didn’t even need bikes!) to where we would be on gutter duty. No one really enjoys gutter duty. It’s one of the smelliest jobs. Besides the smell, I didn’t hate it too much. It’s just a lot of shoveling.
Gutter Cleaning 101
1. Remove heavy concrete cover
2. Quickly inspect for large pieces of debris (like, oh say, a sewing machine. Yes, we did find one of those!)
3. Shovel your little heart out until the gutter is clean!
4. Shovel sludge into bags, tie them off, haul them away
We began. Joji was the only one strong enough to pry up the concrete slabs to reveal the gunked-up gutters
Work in progress. I found pruning shears!
We also found…
-Glass. A lot of glass. So much glass!
-Marbles
-clothes
-cassette tapes
-computer hard drive
And then a sadder find. This found its way into the gutter all the way from the cemetery. It’s a side stone to a memorial (there’s usually a giant engraved slab of marble with stones on either side). Solid marble, that’s not lightweight!
As we were working, we began to see lightning. We started to count the seconds until we heard thunder. It got to the point where just a second or two after the lightning we’d hear deafening thunder. We packed up our gear as quick as we could into our wheelbarrows. With all the radiation levels, you can’t really be out in the rain! A nice man stopped by and helped us haul our burlap sacks of sludge to the end of the street- so considerate.
As we were shuffling back to camp we got caught in the downpour. It was fast and a complete downpour. We got back to camp and got inside to dry off.
I tried to shoot a little video of how rainy it was- If you can believe it, the video doesn’t do justice to how hard it was raining!!
For a while we just watched the rain. It was amazing to think of where we were, what we were doing, and all this rain coming down. It was a beautiful sight, even if it was just rain hitting a dirt parking lot.
We stayed inside and greeted other groups that had returned early because of the rain. It eventually let up, and we went outside to wash off our tools and gear.
More 2-day volunteers left, and donated their uneaten food
We cleaned ourselves up because we were going on a field trip that evening- the onsen! It was finally our turn at getting clean! At 5:45 a bus came and picked us all up. We rode for about 20 minutes into town and arrived at a place that looked like a shopping center. We got inside and took our shoes off and put them in a locker. We then paid $5 to go inside.
I should add that I have never done anything like this before. Going to an onsen= public nudity. Everyone gets naked and sits in a natural hot spring together. Crazy! So there I was surrounded by tiny Japanese women in the locker room, stripping down and walking out to the hot spring. I found my friend Madeleine and she told me everyone showers first. A real shower?! Could this night get any better?!
I sat there at a small shower stall lathering my hair up in shampoo and feeling clean. Honestly, it felt so good to be clean after a few days of all that work with no shower that I would have been happy just paying $5 to shower. But I finished washing up and walked out to the onsen.
It looked like a mini pool with a lot of steam rising off. I stepped in and it was hot!! An older lady started talking to me in Japanese and my friend Karen translated, “it’s hotter on one side than the other”. Ah. I waded across the pool of fire and was able to actually sit in the water on the other side. It was still scalding hot though! It felt amazing. So relaxing. I felt thousands of miles away from Kasuka and sludge and dirt. I felt like I could never get dirty again!
Unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of time and before I knew it, we had to dry off and get dressed. I never wanted to leave! I climbed out with everyone else and steam rose off every inch of my body. There was a big basin of cold salt water that people were jumping and wading into. I touched the surface and it felt so good I jumped in. It was so cold and refreshing! I got out, dried off and got dressed. We got back on the bus, and I realized how hungry I was. Dinner time!
Aska made us ramen for dinner, and I’m not just talking about the ten cent packs of ramen. Boiled noodles, egg, vegetables, seaweed, the works.
As an appetizer we had fish n nuts… literally. It tasted like ocean. I might sit this one out next time 😉
My quickly-devoured bowl of ramen
We chatted over dinner and cleaned the pots and pans. I got ready for bed and went to bed before lights out, feeling ridiculously clean 🙂
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