Do Something.
I have finally stopped tuning into NHK 24/7, more confident in the belief that if I'm not watching every minute, Japan will sink into the sea, or I'll miss something relevant. The foreign media is still reporting almost exclusively on the nuclear crisis in Fukushima rather than the daily magnitude 5+ aftershocks rocking the entire eastern half of the continent, or the thousands of people in Miyagi prefecture who are still sleeping two to a blanket in unheated evacuation centers with dwindling supplies. I suppose there is little to say about Miyagi beyond "people are dying every day," and much more to say about Fukushima.
Yesterday I attended a fundraiser at my former university's campus organized by the small handful of Japanese students we have here. They were making origami for donators and having everyone write messages on a white cloth flag with the intent to sending it to Tohoku to lift peoples' spirits. It moved me to see so many people giving generously and the outpouring of support. The Canadian Red Cross has already sent $5 million to Japan in the week since the catastrophe.
Honestly, I'd been frustrated at times this week by how content people I knew were to simply talk about the situation rather than doing something. I genuinely hope that many did something silently like make a donation. I realize that very few have the same connection with Japan that I do, even the ones who visited me there or who have been interested in Japan for years. Even my Japanese friends who are far removed from Tohoku, who are most in power of doing something - turning off lights to save electricity, taking care not to horde supplies, or sending clothes or daily living goods to the shelters in Sendai, Kesennuma and other towns - aren't necessarily doing so.
It frustrates me to be in a position of so little power when, were I in Osaka, I know I would feel so much guilt that I had everything when these people had lost their homes, their jobs, their families and everything they had ever known. Here, there is not much I can do besides send money. I can't send clothes or supplies as I could have done if I were in Japan. And Japan, ever proud, is trying to right most of the wrongs on its own, which is commendable. The other thing I am hearing - not from my friends, but around the Internet - is that Japan is a developed country that should be able to take care of itself. Some are saying that while they'd like to do something, Japan doesn't need our help.
That is not an excuse.
If you truly feel that monetary aid isn't necessary (and let's face it, the Japanese are still Japanese, and it's true that they have only accepted foreign aid from a few nations thus far) but if you empathize with them, then go right to the Red Cross website and make a donation to the Libyan crisis, the New Zealand quake relief efforts or, if you firmly believe in keeping it in the country, to your own Red Cross' emergency relief fund. Don't wait until the next disaster to give. Give something for every disaster because you yourself still have food and shelter and a bright future. No tragedy on this scale has ever happened in Canada in my lifetime, and I believe that it's because of that that we should contribute to helping those who do need it.
There is a difference in values, I think, between my parents' generation and my own, and again between my generation and the one that has grown up completely electronically. Though the global village is ever-shrinking, people are continuing to become more self-absorbed. I saw it here, and I saw it in Japan, though they have never been a culture that has embraced charity as we here in Canada were taught in gradeschool. I was told by co-workers in Osaka that things like fundraising and food drives were still uncommon and realized it for myself when I taught the third-years a social studies lesson on the topic. It's simply not something they were brought up with - I don't think it reflects poorly on the character of the Japanese, as it is a Western concept that simply has not made as much impact in Japan. People tend to believe that it's not the common individual's job to do such things, because that is what the government and the official organizations are for. I saw it firsthand walking with a friend through Harajuku, when a woman collecting donations for the Chilean earthquake approached us. I stopped to speak with her, and my Japanese friend took my arm and urged me on, saying "they only want money." Furious, I emptied the contents of the coinpurse into her donation box, and was angry with my friend for a time. But later, I realized it was the same as what Mari had said to me before our first Charity lesson - even people who are kind and generous to their friends and colleagues may not think the same way about donating to a cause in a country they barely know of, or even for relief efforts within Japan. A combination of assuming someone else has it covered, or the tendency to assume that - in the typical Japanese fashion of saving face - the victims would rather not accept charity, or perhaps just difficulty putting themselves in another's shoes.
My students responded better to the lesson I taught than I expected - some came to Mari afterward asking what could they do to get involved. I was thrilled to hear it. Others have had plenty to say since the Tohoku earthquake. For them, perhaps, this is the event that's hit closest to home for them, as they were too young to have been impacted by the Hanshin-Awaji quake, and honestly, the quakes in Niigata and Iwate/Miyagi that happened during my JET tenure were fairly underreported and even less talked about. For me, too; this is the disaster that has impacted me most, though I've never been to Tohoku and I don't know anyone so far north. I do not remember donating to disaster relief funds when I lived at home, and disasters felt very far removed from me, though I saw plenty of coverage on television. Perhaps I too subscribed to the "I'm a poor student, there are plenty of other people out there to contribute," excuse.
My view changed when I visited Kobe for the first time. Outside Sannomiya Station I was approached by a woman collecting donations - I believe it was for Niigata at the time. I was on my way to the earthquake memorial in Kobe. As I walked down Flower Road I stopped to look at many things - 17 years later, the cracks in the buildings and rents in the sidewalk lingered. A clock in the park was stopped at 5:46, having fallen to the ground and broken. I felt more sorrow and helplessness as I stood looking at that clock than I ever did watching coverage on TV of Katrina or even 9/11. I wished that it was not 2007 but 1995, so that there might be something I could do. The lesson I took away that day was that by making excuses not to give, we are only ourselves increasing the self-absortion that we so criticize in others. Maybe your heart isn't touched by every disaster that happens in a country you've never seen. But when it does touch you, stand up and do something - there is never "too little" to give nor is it ever too late. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
がんばれ日本。<3
Yesterday I attended a fundraiser at my former university's campus organized by the small handful of Japanese students we have here. They were making origami for donators and having everyone write messages on a white cloth flag with the intent to sending it to Tohoku to lift peoples' spirits. It moved me to see so many people giving generously and the outpouring of support. The Canadian Red Cross has already sent $5 million to Japan in the week since the catastrophe.
Honestly, I'd been frustrated at times this week by how content people I knew were to simply talk about the situation rather than doing something. I genuinely hope that many did something silently like make a donation. I realize that very few have the same connection with Japan that I do, even the ones who visited me there or who have been interested in Japan for years. Even my Japanese friends who are far removed from Tohoku, who are most in power of doing something - turning off lights to save electricity, taking care not to horde supplies, or sending clothes or daily living goods to the shelters in Sendai, Kesennuma and other towns - aren't necessarily doing so.
It frustrates me to be in a position of so little power when, were I in Osaka, I know I would feel so much guilt that I had everything when these people had lost their homes, their jobs, their families and everything they had ever known. Here, there is not much I can do besides send money. I can't send clothes or supplies as I could have done if I were in Japan. And Japan, ever proud, is trying to right most of the wrongs on its own, which is commendable. The other thing I am hearing - not from my friends, but around the Internet - is that Japan is a developed country that should be able to take care of itself. Some are saying that while they'd like to do something, Japan doesn't need our help.
That is not an excuse.
If you truly feel that monetary aid isn't necessary (and let's face it, the Japanese are still Japanese, and it's true that they have only accepted foreign aid from a few nations thus far) but if you empathize with them, then go right to the Red Cross website and make a donation to the Libyan crisis, the New Zealand quake relief efforts or, if you firmly believe in keeping it in the country, to your own Red Cross' emergency relief fund. Don't wait until the next disaster to give. Give something for every disaster because you yourself still have food and shelter and a bright future. No tragedy on this scale has ever happened in Canada in my lifetime, and I believe that it's because of that that we should contribute to helping those who do need it.
There is a difference in values, I think, between my parents' generation and my own, and again between my generation and the one that has grown up completely electronically. Though the global village is ever-shrinking, people are continuing to become more self-absorbed. I saw it here, and I saw it in Japan, though they have never been a culture that has embraced charity as we here in Canada were taught in gradeschool. I was told by co-workers in Osaka that things like fundraising and food drives were still uncommon and realized it for myself when I taught the third-years a social studies lesson on the topic. It's simply not something they were brought up with - I don't think it reflects poorly on the character of the Japanese, as it is a Western concept that simply has not made as much impact in Japan. People tend to believe that it's not the common individual's job to do such things, because that is what the government and the official organizations are for. I saw it firsthand walking with a friend through Harajuku, when a woman collecting donations for the Chilean earthquake approached us. I stopped to speak with her, and my Japanese friend took my arm and urged me on, saying "they only want money." Furious, I emptied the contents of the coinpurse into her donation box, and was angry with my friend for a time. But later, I realized it was the same as what Mari had said to me before our first Charity lesson - even people who are kind and generous to their friends and colleagues may not think the same way about donating to a cause in a country they barely know of, or even for relief efforts within Japan. A combination of assuming someone else has it covered, or the tendency to assume that - in the typical Japanese fashion of saving face - the victims would rather not accept charity, or perhaps just difficulty putting themselves in another's shoes.
My students responded better to the lesson I taught than I expected - some came to Mari afterward asking what could they do to get involved. I was thrilled to hear it. Others have had plenty to say since the Tohoku earthquake. For them, perhaps, this is the event that's hit closest to home for them, as they were too young to have been impacted by the Hanshin-Awaji quake, and honestly, the quakes in Niigata and Iwate/Miyagi that happened during my JET tenure were fairly underreported and even less talked about. For me, too; this is the disaster that has impacted me most, though I've never been to Tohoku and I don't know anyone so far north. I do not remember donating to disaster relief funds when I lived at home, and disasters felt very far removed from me, though I saw plenty of coverage on television. Perhaps I too subscribed to the "I'm a poor student, there are plenty of other people out there to contribute," excuse.
My view changed when I visited Kobe for the first time. Outside Sannomiya Station I was approached by a woman collecting donations - I believe it was for Niigata at the time. I was on my way to the earthquake memorial in Kobe. As I walked down Flower Road I stopped to look at many things - 17 years later, the cracks in the buildings and rents in the sidewalk lingered. A clock in the park was stopped at 5:46, having fallen to the ground and broken. I felt more sorrow and helplessness as I stood looking at that clock than I ever did watching coverage on TV of Katrina or even 9/11. I wished that it was not 2007 but 1995, so that there might be something I could do. The lesson I took away that day was that by making excuses not to give, we are only ourselves increasing the self-absortion that we so criticize in others. Maybe your heart isn't touched by every disaster that happens in a country you've never seen. But when it does touch you, stand up and do something - there is never "too little" to give nor is it ever too late. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
がんばれ日本。<3