Busy Few Days

 Tuesday and Wednesday are always busy; they are the days that I go and teach.

Once a month, Mikey and I do a volunteer class. It's a bit of a challenge for me as it's a large class, maybe 20 people all together. I prefer smaller classes, but Mikey is in his element! As I was going in yesterday, one of the ladies stopped me and asked if I could help with a document she had. The document was the death certificate of her great-uncle, who had passed away in the USA just over 100 years ago. My student said that she wanted to understand the death of her great-uncle and to be able to share it with younger family members.

It was rather difficult to read the document. She had a photocopy of the original death certificate; it was faded and looked like the original one had been folded many times, making creases through some of the important information. Also, trying to read the handwriting was difficult.

Between Mikey and me, we figured that the cause of death was some sort of pneumonia. He died in 1919, just after the Spanish Flu pandemic. I'm wondering if he had the Spanish Flu before and was therefore weaker than he would have been. Of course that is speculation. He worked as a labourer, maybe on the railroads. After the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, railroad companies turned to Japanese immigrants for labour. These immigrants were known as Issei and worked on the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railways, so he was in the right area.

I found it all very fascinating and a little bit sad. This young man had gone abroad to help his family out, but ended up dying alone in a foreign country! The student we were helping was so happy with the bit of information we could give her.

One of my evening students spent part of her summer holiday volunteering in the earthquake area. She's in the last year of high school. Her mother has some position with the city; I have no idea what, though. My student and her mother went to Costco to buy supplies, using money that had been donated. My student said that just one trip to Costco cost 150,000 yen, about £700; they made 3 trips to Costco. After getting the supplies, they drove down to the disaster area and spent time at a warehouse making care packages and then taking them to the different evacuation sites.

I think the experience was an eye-opener for my student. She lives near where we teach, so she experienced the earthquake, but there was no real damage here. The quake was M7.1 at the epicentre, but here about an M5- still big and scary, but buildings didn't come down. She was surprised to see some of the older houses that had been flattened. 

Some of the photos from my student.

She was amazed at the resilience of the people there and the "shikata ni" no choice attitude. Even while enduring life in evacuation places, with no real cooling system, needing a shower and some privacy, people were still rather cheerful and very grateful for the small care packages they received.

I told my student that this was the closest I've been to a natural disaster, and I don't want to get any closer.

As much as I enjoy my couple of days of teaching, I'm glad that it isn't every day, like before.

Just those two days have left me feeling tired; also, the fact that I got hit with very bad allergies yesterday doesn't help at all. Also, the heat hasn't broken here at all! Every day is over 35℃; that's hot. The humidity isn't too high, which helps!