Relief effort experience#2:Students Donation Project

             I have got to know a group of students that stand on streets and ask people to donate some money for the Tohoku Relief a few days after 3.11 through my friend. Students are from several Universities in Kanto area.They donate money to Nicco http://www.kyoto-nicco.org/english/index.html. I decided to join it, with a hope that I can do something, and a bit of doubt if this project can succeed till it achieves its goal. My quick note on my experience on that day is here.

There are some pictures taken here too.

http://awishforjapan.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=11336747

April 3^rd : First day

              It is my first day to join this group. It is freezing cold outside, though I wanted to wear a skirt for spring. I needed to give up anyway. I arrived at the Harajuku station on time, and waited there to see people in the project. I waited for about 10 minutes and nobody seemed to be a person in the group. I got worried. Did I misread the information? Wasn’t it at Harajuku today? I decided to send an e-mail to the leader. His response was really quick and frank. They were a bit late on that day, so I kept waiting at the station.

              About ten more minutes later, I found some people getting together and having conversation. They looked like students so I decided to ask if they are the member of the donation project. Yes, there they are! I introduced myself and they did the same thing to me. They all seemed nice and friendly.

              At 10:30 or so, we started to ask people on the street to donate some money for Tohoku Relief. The members were pretty organized and very accustomed with what they are doing. They introduce themselves as a group, what they do, why they do such activity, and how those donated money will be used in Tohoku area. People seem to notice our existence and some paid attention and donated some money, but a lot of people ignored us.

              I thought this is a normal reaction of people in society. Students collecting money shouting for help on the street for people in Tohoku. Especially a lot of people inform that there are many groups that use donated money for something else, something unrelated to Tohoku relief. It was quite hard situation for us that day in the donation money economy.

              As time goes, I started to think that this activity will be really tough as the time goes. People forget and find something else to do in order to help people in Tohoku. Street donation will be something that people will hardly pay attention some day. Charity events and other ways to contribute in economy or people in Tohoku will be more popular and main stream in society.

              This is my first impression on street donation on that day: a bit negative and frustrated reaction. It may be because of the cold weather, or my nervousness to see new people. 

Relief effort experience#1:Donation for Japan in United States, Florida, Gainesville

     I was an exchange student in US about 2 years ago. I missed my host family and friends up there very much, so I planed to go back to US and see my host family and have a small vacation during the spring break. 
    
     Then, 3.11 happened. 
     
     I had no idea for about a week if I CAN go to US, or I SHOULD NOT go, leaving my family in Japan, or perhaps I SHOULD go, due to the continuous aftershocks and the news on radiation. Everything was unpredictable around this time, and there was no direction to follow.  
     However as the time goes, I started to think that I can do something more productive if I go back to US, instead of staying home and being stuck watching TV, checking the news.
     I had several plans in my head, working for the relief effort for people in Tohoku. I told my idea to my host sister and my host mother, and some of my friends who are actively working on volunteering and relief effort. And they were willing to help me out.
     I asked my parents and grandparents for the permission to leave Japan in this complicated and tense situation. They said "It's all right. You should go there, maybe here is not a safe place anymore." This comment scared me a little, but everything was set on for the trip to US.
    
     One idea was to collect personal stories on 3.11 from my friends, posting on a website and raising awareness of people in US. I thought that what people hear and watch through media can be somewhat different from what is really happening in Japan. So I started working on my idea to make them come real. I asked my friends to send me an e-mail, writing about what happened on 3.11, what they did, and how they thought, and what they have on their mind right now. A lot of my friends replied to my message and several friends helped out to translate those messages in Japanese into English.

     Translating personal stories on the plane, 17 hours of flight was quite short. I got to the airport, felt the warmth and more relaxed, but also with a weird feeling on my mind. Many things happening in my home country, but I was out of the whole situation at that time. 

     Right after I got to Florida, Gainesville on 18th of March, I had a chance to hold a meeting who would like to help my plans. Here is a note from the brainstorming we had. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_200988049919500&view=doc&id=202349609783344

I used Facebook group page in order to share information, idea, and events. And we decided to donate collected money to American Red Cross, because we thought that is the safest and trustworthy place to out money.

   What we actually did from the list was strawberry jam making, art work making with kids at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School http://www.pky.ufl.edu/ and drawing people's name in Japanese calligraphy style at one the booths at a local festival. Addition, a lot of my friends who dance Argentine tango donated money to us, and American Red Cross. 

     Below are drawings of kids from P.K.Yonge, and how it was used on the day of the festival.

     

     For the long term, one of my friends and me set up a website named "A wish for Japan," as a place to share personal stories of my friends. http://awishforjapan.webs.com/ This website is currently not updated often. I think it was a good idea at the beginning, but lost its clear purpose and resource of information. I wonder what could have been better to make something for a long-term.

     As a whole, we gained $955 to donate. Of course, I was impressed by this amount of money, but that was not the only thing. I was very VERY impressed that I was having fun, doing relief effort in US. It may be because I was apart from the incidents, but I felt that a lot people in US have different idea on donation. In Japan, I feel that collecting donation is more about emotional thoughts and feelings behind, showing sad pictures and sad stories, and never having fun while doing the effort. It seems to me, being a devote or a sacrifice.
     I thank to all people who cooperated, and contribute their time and effort to the activities, and at the same time, still making a thought on idea of donation and/or volunteering in different country.

Disasters as Shock and the Technoscientific Imaginary

As I wrote in my last post on this blog, science is imperfect as other aspects in the world are.

I think after 3.11 everyone is facing a difficulty on deciding what to believe and what not. We now start to notice how much we dependent on science and technology, and how we do not really understand those two: what they are and how they work. I came up three examples for this theme: cell phones, hazard maps, and our life lines.

Cell Phones

On 3.11, a lot of people got useful (and some not-useful) information on the Internet. And in order to connect to the Internet, people used their personal computers, laptops, and smart phones. Many ordinal cell phone were useless, because they have Internet connection but they did not work after the earthquake. It reminded us how much we depend on cell phone in order to connect with others, and it was clear that a lot of people got anxious about their phones not working properly, even in Tokyo at that night when a lot of people got stuck in there. 

Tsunami hazard maps

Many local government have been providing a hazard map before 3.11. Hence people should have been prepared at least with the matter of preparation on Tsunami. However, the map turned out to be a failure this time, because it was 想定外(beyond assumption). If safe area and dangerous area were divided with clear lines, then people tend to believe that those lines are "scientifically proved" and therefore, it is right. Few people understand how those lines were estimated and how they were drawn by whom.

Liquefaction of the roads in Urayasu

There were also some maps that warn the residents about the danger of liquefaction, but they did not really represent what actually happened in the area. Addition to the map failure, the water line was broken. People in Urayasu were out of water for several weeks due to liquefaction of the land. One of my friends went Osaka till things get calmer. I cannot imagine how my family and I are going to live in a house without a water supply. We are too familiar with water coming from all the pipes by just turning the tap.

Imperfection of science, but that's what we rely on...

     I belong to a team called "Sophia Racing" right now. There, students from engineering department design a racing car, build it, and make it run at the competitions held by Formula SAE(Society of Automotive Engineering). This society is for providing opportunities to future engineers and the future industries students will work for.

     Why am I talking about a team at school on this blog? Well I was a person who has been believing that science is something pretty close to a perfection in this world...until I see some mistaken analyses, misunderstandings, and unexpected results of experiments, and miscommunication within the team. They sometimes come up with an idea to explain something, then nobody criticize it, then the idea will be used "scientifically."

     I think a lot of people especially who do not major in science tend to believe this magical label "scientifically proved," and I think this is one of the reason why people blame science overwhelmingly when there are mistakes.

     One paragraph from "Risk and Blame" written by Mary Douglas reminded me of the imperfection of science once again and human tendency of blaming science. "Knowledge always lacks. Ambiguity always lurks."Science can be a wrong explanation.

     Another quote that I felt related but need more consideration on what she means by this...

     "We have to get used to these anxieties, this mathematics of probability intruding into our intimate concerns, this bogus objectivity, this coding of risks in our present culture. (pg.16)"

Risk and Blame by Mary Douglas

People need to understand "why" they are in present situation, suffering from someone's loss, injure, and difficulties in life. I want to focus on people in Fukuoka to answer the questions below.

1. Who is blaming whom?

2. And for what?

3. And what are they demanding as restitution?

1. They blame 

- nuclear energy itself

- people in Kanto/Tokyo  

- government

-Tepco

2. And they blame for

- causing the danger of health

- for using electricity made in Fukuoka

- for not being fast enough and efficient afterward

- for not explaining the risk enough and not doing risk management fully

3. And in return, they want 

- safety

- help, understanding, maybe change in lifestyle

- hardworking

- hardworking 

Two days of movie nights... "Avatar" and "Princess Mononoke"

     I watched two movies "Avatar" and "Princess Mononoke" during this Golden Week. Honestly, I prefer "Princess Mononoke" than "Avatar". Maybe this is because I am Japanese and have seen "Princess Mononoke" for several times in my life, while I have never seen "Avatar" before. Therefore, some of my comments here can be very one-sided. Well, I still need to figure out why I think in such a way and what influenced me. So any other comments on the films, agreement and/or disagreement for my comments are very welcome!


"Avatar"
     It was quite interesting to see how Jake got involved in the Na'vi society and did anthropological research on them. He first introduced himself as a person who came to their village "to learn" (well, let's not look at his original purpose of visit here).  He seem not to believe in science nor technology but only in himself. I think that got Neytiri's attention: fearless, strength and maybe also the ignorance, something different from other Sky people who are highly dependent on technology and science.
     Although it is a little saying in the very beginning of the movie, there is one phrase from Neytiri (the daughter of the leader in the village) that got my attention and does not leave my head, and this is also related to the book, "The Organic Machine."
          "Energy is only borrowed. We have to give it back." (Not perfectly quoted)
This phrase reminded me of some of words from the reading "The Organic Machine." Richard White states that "To be powerful is to be able to accomplish things, to be able to turn the energy and work of nature and humans to your own purposes." 
For a nineteen-year-old college student who only has lived in a city, this explanation is a bit odd. I have never thought that I actually use the power of nature in order to do my daily routine. I do not see all the energy put into a force of electricity to light up my room when I just click the switch within less than one second.
     What is related to the saying from Neytiri, I think a lot of people are like me nowadays. We do not feel the power of nature in our daily lives, and tend to forget that we are actually having benefit from it. Therefore, we rarely think like Na'vi...that we need to give huge amount of energy we use every second back to the nature someday.


"Princess Mononoke"
     Compared to "Avatar," I think the relations among nature, human and gods were more complicated and those had more cooperative attitude toward the other at the end. 
     Ashitaka and San were the humans that connect human society, and nature and gods. They seem to have conflicts inside of them while the story goes on: Ashitaka is cursed by a mononoke and it slowly kills his life, and San is raised by a wolf god after she is given to shishigami as a sacrifice, and hates human beings though she is a human being. 
     Conflicts between nature and technology are not so outstanding I thought, but rather blurred by these two characters. And at the end, human seem to notice how important it is to live together with nature. Of course, they do not decide to live together literally, but to live with some physical distance from each other.


     At the end of the story, the scene reminded me of 3.11 earthquake and tsunami hit many village destroying everything. One woman from the village said "生きてりゃなんとかなる。(If we are alive, we can do anything.)" Human is weak when natural disaster occurs, but it seems they are mentally and technologically very strong in the movie and in today's society too. I think, maybe this strength is the weakness of us, because we also have a great ability to forget the power of nature.