The following was tucked away in my computer files. It was supposed to be published on May 15, 2011. I have a lot of unpublished posts. I wrote out my thoughts, but I wasn't exactly ready to leave my mark online with these stories about the earthquake. One year has almost passed. I've been invited to be a guest speaker for the Canada-Japan Society of Ottawa's monthly dinner event, but I still don't know what to talk about. So, I've been sifting through my old notes and trying to organize my thoughts. My experience was just the tiniest fraction of what happened in Tohoku. But the people and everything I've left behind - they're always on my mind. You can take the girl out of Fuku, eh.
 |
| Temporary classes at Arako |
I can tell you the three AKB48 girls that my fifteen-year-old male students love the most. I also know the boys who have the biggest "fan clubs" at school. I loved walking down the street yesterday with Nasienas, running into two of my kids on the way. We had spooked Shohei-kun, who was biking along on the cracked road in front of the destroyed school building. We also saw Kana-chan, who shrieked when she dropped her new pink cell phone as she was chatting on her keitai while biking. What a multi-tasker! (She could never understand my order in English when I saw her at MOS Burger). Anyways, I find myself making an increasing effort to re-acquaint myself with the kids, knowing that I only have two months left in Japan.
I'm just finding it really good to be back at work.
The kids are still upbeat, and seem to be dealing well with life after the Tohoku disaster. My city wasn't devastated by the tsunami, and we're at least 57 km away from the nuclear plant. But our school still has to find its away again, too, after getting hit by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake in March. I'm still weary about drinking tap water and eating Fukushima veggies. Even the schools in my city, as well as surrounding areas, are scraping off the topsoil from school playgrounds. They are carting irradiated dirt away with dump trucks, so that the kids have a "safe" environment to play. We aren't really allowed to open windows for a lengthy period of time, so the board of education has kindly bought us several big fans to help keep us cool.
Ten homerooms are crammed into "temporary" classrooms set up in the community centre and the connected gymnasium. Our old building has been classified as unsafe, so we have to hold our lessons elsewhere. I've heard it will take two years for my school to be completely rebuilt. I'll be long gone by then, but I'm happy the kids will get to enjoy a safer school in the future...
Right now, the first- and second-year students have their classes in the gym attached to the community centre. Each homeroom is split up with thin wall dividers and curtains acting as doors. The students' old desks were moved into the community centre, and sit atop plywood and tarp flooring. Many teachers have adorned their walls with newspaper clippings with the motto du jour: "Never give up, Japan. Never give up, Tohoku." C-sensei has posted photos of sakura in bloom around the old school building, as well as the dilapidated view inside our old school building. (In one photo, the wood tiles curl into waves on the second-floor.)
The community centre has somewhat transformed into something that like looks like a school, but sound travels everywhere. In essence, you have seven teachers trying to talk over other lessons. I find myself yelling at times, just so that the kids can hear me. There is a cluster of outhouses available for the younger students, even though I'm pretty sure there are regular bathroom facilities inside the gym! A lot of change is happening, transforming school life into something I never imagined. We also teach in a small building, which houses an onsen for the elderly. We hold some lessons in the tatami room.
I know there are massive problems in the other affected areas, especially along the coastline. But it still makes me sad to see how the earthquake has broken down 2chu.
The old school building sits abandoned in my neighbourhood. I walked by the other day, and saw the outer walls and roof further crumbling. I had the chance to go in last week, and pick up a box and a garbage bag that my co-worker had filled with some of my belongings that I had left behind at my desk. I'm sure everything had spewed out of every drawer, and ended up on the floor after the quake.
It was eerie going back; the school was in absolute silence. I took a peek inside the teachers' room, and saw that it was stripped bare. Dust floated in the air, garbage bags were tossed into the hallways and framed certificates were hanging askew on the wall. My English bulletin board still remained, proudly displaying various photos I had snapped of the recent grads over the years. I decided to tear it down, so that I could keep the photos with me.
It is sad to see that this building, which has meant so much to so many people in my neighbourhood, will probably be torn down this summer. On any given day, kids would be doing their club activities all over the place. I could see the baseball and soccer teams running up and down the stairs; the brass band girls tuning their instruments in the hallways; the kendo club making their wailing cries in the Japanese gym.
When someone in the community mentions the 2chu building to me, we both sigh while saying in Japanese: "Hidoi..." ("It's so terrible.") I'm hoping we can move into the new satellite soon, so that the kids get some sense of normalcy again.
Posts
