Earthquake Diary 108

 The Starbucks over the tracks at Sendai Station is pretty empty at 7;30 on a Saturday morning. I was there to meet Keith and accompany him to an event being held for some of the evacuees who are still living in shelters. I was not sure what I was going to do or even the details of the event.

 We went to a part of the city, the south east, that I had never been to before. We went by bus and much of the way was a narrow two lane road, but in the area around the site the road had recently been improved. We had a bit of a problem, because the directions that Keith had received said to get of the bus at a stop named Nakayashiki, but we never saw one with that name. Finally, at on of the stops we asked the driver and, after at first saying that he did not know the stop, he said to stay on the bus. I had a map and it appeared to me that we were well passed where we should have gotten. We de-bused at the next stop and started walking back the way we had come. We finally discovered the problem, While the stop was listed on the sign at the Sendai Station bus depot, the name had been changed and it was now called, reishiki. With that knowledge we were able to get to the site without further delay.

 Soth of the site was a large area of rice paddies. From this corner we turned around and walked in the direction behind me.

 There were quite a few people there when we finally arrived, more than 30 minutes later than we had planned. The site was on a lawn in front of some sort of culture center, Tents had been set up and a large area covered with blue plastic tarps (I hope they were not taken off anyone's roof)

 It was a typical Japanese scene with lots of people working and no one organizing, but as is also typical things were getting done.

 This is the building where the evacuees are living - on the top floor on the left.

 These three cute girls are evacuees and they were making name tags.

 Under the tents people were seting up stoves and preparing to serve food. The food was mostly typcal of Japanese festivals and I will have some pictures later so I won' go into it here. The top sign, by the way, says no smoking on the grounds, and that is unusual.

 Here are some of the volunteers putting cut fruit into little pastry bowls.

 I helped unload these boxes from a truck in the parking lot and carry them here. I also moved some tables and a few chairs, but otherwise there was really nothing for me to do but talk to the few people who were interested in chatting,

 One of the things that was in the boxes I carried was something called space bread. It is canned bread that will last at least three years. It is called space bread because the Japanese astronaut took some up to the space station last year. The hand in the picture is holding an open can and I was able to try iy. I was surprised because it was quite tasty. There were three kinds bread with strawberries mixed in, with raisins, and with orange. I brought two cans home with me and we will save it in case there is another severe quake during the next three years.

This is some of the things from the boxes: the bread, fresh strawberries, various packages of cheese, a variety of drinks, and two different kinds of freshly baked (uncanned) loaves of bread with packs fruit jam. The interesting thing was that this was all donations from the company and were being given away free. Many of the refugees were given so much that they had to have one of the empty boxes so that they could carry it all.