One of the hardest volunteer activities I participated in with United Earth was the 林業 (forestry) group. One of the local farmers wants to open up a restaurant by the side of the main road, and as there were a lot of trees on the lot our job has been to cut down the trees and clean up the area.
Carrying the trunks is quite a tough job. In addition to the heavy weight the burning sun also make this quite a demanding activity. But at least by the end of the day you feel you've really earned to hear "お疲れ様です" when you return to the HQ.. ^^
Here are some pictures taken of the forestry group:

The area we are working on

Trunks

In action!

Cooperating with carrying the trunks

Luckily we also have a machine to move the heaviest trunks

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Unlike in most western countries the Japanese often have seaweed as a common ingredients in their daily meals.
As Minami Sanriku still lacks people who can work at the local businesses, one of the tasks of United Earth volunteers is to help out with manual labour. One of these businesses is a factory processing seaweed, and I've had the opportunity to join the 昆布-team three times during my stay in Minami Sanriku.
My second time working here one of the lady in charge took me aside in the lunch break an showed me a beautiful pouch in many different colors which she told me had been made from boat flags. When I asked her how much she wanted for it she told me it was a gift. She said that they all really appreciated our help, and asked me to 頑張って下さい ("work hard"). It impresses me how the people here who have lost so much still they keep their heads up high and keep on working for the recovery of their city.

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Minami Sanriku (南三陸) and Kesennuma (気仙沼) are two cities in the northern part of Japan's main island Honshū, and two of many areas that were stricken by the tsunamis provoked by the Tōhoku earthquake March 11th 2011.

Looking at the beautiful landscape with the trees, mountains and the sea in perfect harmony it is hard to imagine that just a year ago such a horrible disaster actually happened here. But by the woods there is a huge pile of wrecked cars, and when you look at the ground you'll notice that it is covered by houseless foundations, foundations overgrown by weeds. That's when you begin to realize the scale of the damages in the area.

Kesennuma

The foundations of a house used to grow flowers

After the Tōhoku earthquake some newspapers referred to Minami Sanriku as the city that was washed away, and one year after the community both here and in other parts of Tōhoku still struggles with restoring their city back to how it was before the disaster. Some people still live in temporary houses, and a lot of people have left the area for good. There is a lack of manpower in the area, and although there are a large number of available jobs they still struggle with finding enough people who wants to work there. This is where us volunteers comes in, and we help the locals with various types of work in their community.

It is said that it may take as many as ten years for these areas to recover from the disaster last year. Although international media no longer pays a lot of attention to the situation in Tōhoku there is still a lot of work that needs to be done, and the local community really appreciate the work done by volunteers.

(My trip to Tōhoku was made possible thanks to support from the Scandinavia-Japan Sasakawa Foundation!)

A ship next to the road in Kesennuma. And no, it was not placed there on purpose..

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Ready for work! In the background you can see temporary houses.

Part of the area we cleaned today. There used to be a house here before the tsunami came..

Getting rid of weed and sunflowers..

Statues that were found in the area after the tsunami

The work progressing slowly..

What we in Norway would call "bonde-brun"..!

Along with the weed there were also a lot of sunflowers growing on the lot.

Finished for the day.!

 We managed to clean up most of the area, but there is still a lot of work left to be done on the lot, so we'll go back tomorrow to finish the job! The first day is over, and I'm already exhausted. Haha.. But at the same time it was an awarding day, and I feel that the work we did really was appreciated by the locals too. 明日も頑張りましょう！

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I left Kyoto this Friday heading for Tokyo, and after spending the weekend there with Yuma I continued my travels towards Minami-sanriku (南三陸) where I'll be spending a couple of weeks working as a volunteer. This is my second trip to Tohoku; I went to Ishinomaki-shi in the beginning of November last year, but this time I wanted to stay longer and be able to do more volunteer work in addition to gathering information I can use for my thesis.
After a long night in the night-bus from Shinjuku to Sendai I took a local bus going to Minami-sanriku's Hotel Kaiyo, and there I got picked up by the leader of the volunteer group United Earth, which I will be working for until the 10th of August. After a short stop at the group's headquarters we went to the harbor where I spent the afternoon helping some local fishermen with their work.

In addition to me there were also 9 other new volunteers who joined our group today. In the evening we therefore had a meeting explaining the work of the group, rules etc.

Information meeting at United Earth's HQ.

Tomorrow I guess the real work will begin, so today I'm keeping my post short and I'll go to bed early.. Oyasumi!

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After almost two years in Kyoto my time there as a student was finally coming to an end. As expected there was quite a lot that had to be done the last week; In addition to cleaning up all my stuff I had to go a couple of trips to Osaka to get the visa for Korea, end the Japanese health insurance and fix the rest of the payment for my contract with Softbank.

Kayo-san and Apple explaining the menu

Takeshi playing the スイカ割り-game

The スイカ割り-audience :p

Picture from the party taken from my friend Tomoya^^

As a Fukumusume I got the chance to participate in the Children's Ebisu Festival in the Imamiya-Ebiu shrine this weekend. The "Kodomo Ebisu" is Imamiya Ebisu shrine's summer festival, and it is held annually around the last weekend of July. A lot of children come to visit with their parents to play and have fun, so the shrine is filled with a pleasant atmosphere. It is quite interesting how different the shrine looked compared to the Tōka Ebisu festival in January, one could almost mistakenly think that they were two different places..
My role on the first day was helping out by the fishing dam. The kids all got a rod which they used to fish paper fishes (and animals) with, and the kids could get candy if they were lucky and got a fish with the note 当たり on it.

Kids trying to catch the paper fishes!

In addition to the fishing dam there were also a whole load of other activities for the kids as well. On the stage they were having dancing and balloon shows, and the kids looked like they were having a lot of fun. On the second day of the festival me and three of the other Fuku Musume-girls got the honor of opening the snow slide, and the rest of the day we helped out with one of the ballgames.

The snow slide at the Kodomo Ebisu Matsuri seen from the top!

                                       

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Place	Imamiya Ebisu Shrine (今宮戎神社)
Map
Festival	The Children's Ebisu Festival (子供戎祭り) held annually during the last weekend of July
Access	A couple of minutes walk from the Imamiyaebisu station (今宮戎) or around 5 minutes from Daikokucho (大国町) station

Osaka Marriott Miyako Hotel

Superhotel Lohas Honmachi

Khaosan World Namba

The St. Regis Osaka Hotel

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I got this from my friends from the GCP-program at school today!
Thank you so much 皆！I hope to see you all again in the future:)
嬉しい＼(^o^)／

Yesterday I had my last photo shoot with Lycée before I move to Korea, and they gave me a CD with photos from my previous photo shoot with them in Osaka a while back. I think that of the four photo shoots I've done for them this far, this is the one with the definitively weirdest photos. Haha.. Anyway, here are some of the (not too weird) shots^^: