[Reflections: Four+ Years After the 3/11 Tsunami] 3.11津波から4年余りが経ってから振り返ること

I spoke with my mom in Japan over the telephone last weekend. She lives in Kesennuma, one of the most severely damaged areas by the tsunami on 3/11/2011. She said that about 80% of all vehicles on the roads are sand carrying trucks or construction vehicles. More than 4 years have passed since the disaster, but what she said to me that time was that there are reconstruction jobs still going on, trying to make the ground higher. She then said that by the time this city would be restored she would already be dead and wouldn't be able to see the completion. Things are progressing so slow, she said. School playgrounds are still full of temporary housing. It has been said that public apartments would be built, but, according to what my relative said, there is no such things built yet. This eventually means that school kids cannot play soccer or baseball in the ground. Just hearing of it made me feel sad. The house I grew up in was washed away. All are gone. I couldn’t even see the roads or anything around there when I visited there in 2012. Two relatives were found dead in their home soon after the tsunami. One died a year after that. One has been missing. His body had not been found but a funeral was conducted for him some months after that. My aunt was working near the fish market that was facing the bay. At the time of tsunami, she climbed up on the top of the building with other colleagues. They climbed even more using the ladder. There was a small space added to the top floor. She said she didn’t want to climb because it was very scary. She said she would rather die, saying it was her fate. The sea in front of them was on fire all over. Oil had already leaked out into the sea to make the entire surface around them look like the sea of fire. My aunt was forced to climb up. She later said to me that it was so hot because of the blazing fire on the sea. She said that heat made her feel very scared while enduring it. Men broke vending machines to take out juice to share for the next couple of days. My parents were in this city, too. Normally, my mother was to go to the bank near the sea, but for some reason she didn’t go there. My father was working in his workplace that was on the high land. My other relatives evacuated to higher places, and they ended up being safe. List of the dead was broadcasted on TV, and there was my sister’s name. But a couple days later it turned out that it was somebody else. Phones were out of connection for some days, until only one company cellphone from “au” became available to communicate during that system confusion. I was able to speak with an employee in the Hokkaido office of my father’s company. She explained to me that my father contacted them and asked them to carry necessary items to Kensennuma using their trucks. My father took the warmth using a power generator. That was not a common item in Japan. One grocery store owner in Akita Prefecture asked the employees of my father to go to their store by truck to take anything they needed in the store. U.S. military arrived and gave them helping hands. Many people from many places in the world visited there to help the locals in Kesennuma. My shirts and pants were donated to the evacuation camp in the nearby junior high school. The house my parents lived (and still lives) was safe.  

On the phone of last weekend, I heard my aunt, whom I described earlier here, is suffering from the pain of cancer. It has spread various places in her body now, and I heard she could not sleep because of the pain. I could only pray for her, so the pain would be eased. I do hope she would not have to suffer so much. I did jogging that evening, and was always thinking about her. Jogging has been a good method of meditation for me. In 50 years, almost all the people I know (parents, brothers, sisters, coworkers, bosses, librarians, store clerks, restaurant waiters, bloggers, YouTubers, police officers, etc.) should already be dead, and they don’t even care how I was like. Rumors and misunderstanding are all gone. Comes to think of it, like my mom has been saying these days, we should just enjoy the life, do what we want to do, and get along with who we feel are pleasant to be with. Don’t get upset or angry more than we should. – I then start remembering the 3 statues on the desk of a social worker at a welfare facility. My wife and I saw that about 10 years ago when we went there to apply for the welfare support. We were in financial difficulty. Our daughter was about to graduate from kindergarten. Many things happened even after that. We had moved to Japan. I had been working in warehouses, factories, or construction sites, until I got a chance of working with CATIA. I started to learn about IT and many other things. I had so many experiences during those years. That is thanks to the leader who took care of me when we worked in the same project. We built a method of plastic mold designing process in CATIA. We went to the customer site in Gunma Prefecture 2 or 3 times a week. We stayed in the same hotel, had dinner together, and rode the same train on the way back home. He said to me, “Don’t think everybody is kind. There are mean jerks everywhere. You should be grateful people working with us in this project are all nice and kind. This is the perfect condition you can learn things while working with CATIA.”  It was true. I realized that I was getting much better each day. After that project was over, I moved to other location to work as a CATIA supporter. I learned so many good things through work, although I had to be troubled by a mean fellow, who locked me up in a small room for 2 hours to give me harsh words. I knew I could be better than him if I keep enduring that situation for 2 years or so, while I encountered many good people to build connections. - My patience was rewarded now.

From the Book of Ecclesiastes:

"To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven:

 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted;
 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
 A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
 A time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
 A time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;[…]"

At the Sotochu temple in Kesennuma, the priests recited Shushogi for us while we were seated. That scripture is still kept here in my house in Michigan. I wanted to read those verses further. I was copying the sutra on paper and this is my favorite part. 

From Shushogi (修証義) 
"Impermanence is unreliable; we know not on what roadside grasses the dew of our transient life will fall. Our bodies are not our own; our lives shift with the passing days and cannot be stopped for even an instant. Once rosy-cheeked youth has gone, we cannot find even its traces. Careful reflection shows that most things, once gone by, will never be encountered again. In the face of impermanence, there is no help from kings, statesmen, relatives, servants, spouses, children, or wealth. We must enter the realm of death alone, accompanied only by our good and bad karma. Avoid associating with deluded people in this world who are ignorant of the truth of causality and karmic retribution, who are heedless of past, present and future, and cannot distinguish good from evil. The principle of causality is obvious and impersonal; for inevitably those who do evil fall, and those who do good rise. If there were no causality, the buddhas would not have appeared in this world, nor would Bodhidharma have come from the west."

I have recently been thinking about this aunt in a hospital bed, while thinking of my parents, old friends, relatives, and my grandparents who have already been dead for decades.

I love the views and natural settings here in Michigan. I also like the work environment so much. This great condition is something I had never had before. I love weekend driving. Jogging around my house is such a pleasure to me. I love the morning and afternoon skies. The beauty of the evening sky of summer is beyond description. Bruckner’s symphonies or Beethoven’s 6^th touches my heart in different ways as how it had sounded like.

I thought of “Kitchen” written by Banana Yoshimoto. The happy feelings under the transient condition life are depicted throughout the story.

My mother said to me: "We don’t want to just put things back as how they were. The people of the next generation have to rebuild different things or styles, so they with live differently. That’s what evolution is all about. It’s no use repeating the same way as how we have lived. It is going to be just choking them if they have to stick to the old ways. That is why we old people are to die, and younger generations can go on living."