It has been about 10 days since we opened Kizuna-kan Volunteer Center on April 23. Nearly 50 - 60 volunteers stay here every day, including the people who come by RSY Volunteer Bus Service.

  Ochanomi Café at the Volunteer Center, open daily, has its regular customers now. Some visit us frequently, true to their words of “I’ll come here every day”. We have about 15 customers a day.

  Today, we would like to introduce the “Ta-be-sa-in!” project. This project started with an idea of Ms. K, a local volunteer in Shichigahama.

“It can’t be helped”

  Soon after the evacuation shelter opened, Ms. K was volunteering as a listener [i] . One day, she was shocked to see a very elderly person still having instant cup noodles, and saying, “Of course I’d rather eat something else, but it can’t be helped.” This struck Ms. K to come up with a thought, “How can I serve these seniors at least some of the kinds of food they used to have, such as pickles and ohitashi (boiled green vegetables)?” With the help of her neighbors, she began gathering fresh vegetables and delivering salad, ohitashi, pickles and fruits to the evacuation shelter several times a week.

  In the evacuation shelter, meals are provided in the mornings and in the evenings. In principle, people living in the shelter take turns to cook meals. As they have to cook for as many as 400 people at a time, they cannot make very elaborate meals. Even though they take turns, daily meal preparation is still a heavy burden on them.

  Nowadays, many volunteers come into this disaster affected area, and prepare and serve hot meals. In many cases, they serve lunch, but they occasionally serve supper, too.

  Various kinds of food are provided. Here are some examples of dishes provided recently:

- Box Lunch with Fried Chicken

- Korean Food (Pancake, Stir-fried Beef and Vegetables)

- Chinese Noodles

- Indian Curry

- Kiritanpo (a kind of rice cake eaten in Northeastern Japan)

- Pan-fried Noodles, Sausage, and Kangaroo Meat

- Takoyaki (ball-shaped pan-fried dumplings, popular in Osaka), Pan-fried Noodles

  These dishes are very popular among children and young people, who form a long line to get these foods.

Fresh vegetables for elderly people

  The elderly people often find such dishes too heavy. Many of them said to me at the café, “I used to eat mostly fish and vegetables, so I can’t eat these greasy foods.” We wanted to help them in some way because we have a kitchen in Kizuna-kan. Then Ms. K dropped by and talked about her group’s activity. “If only we had vegetables and a kitchen, we could provide food more regularly”, she said. With those words, the idea of our collaborative project occurred to me.

  It would work like this:

  RSY would provide fresh produce received from our other voluntary activity based in Miyazaki, Kyushu, located far south-west from Northeastern Japan (Tohoku). It is the area affected by the January 2011 Mt. Shinmoedake explosion in Miyazaki, where RSY had also provided support. After the March 11^th disaster in Tohoku, the farmers there started to send us their produce saying, “We would like to be of some help for the people in Northeastern Japan, too.” “How would you like the following idea?” RSY would contribute some of these vegetables to the project. Then, people from Ms. K’s volunteer group, “Shichigahama Women’s Group”, and “Yui-no-Kai”, another local volunteer group, would prepare food with these ingredients in the kitchen of Kizuna-kan. The local and outside volunteers would deliver the meals to the evacuation shelter.

  As I shared this idea with Ms. K, she immediately said, “Let’s try it right away!” Four or five volunteers came to join her on the same day. Several kinds of pickles were prepared instantly.

  Then, some local volunteers delivered the pickles to the elderly people at the evacuation shelter. “Thank you”, they said, with tears in their eyes.

  We still had a lot of fresh vegetables donated from Shinmoedake, so we brought some to the kitchen at the evacuation shelter. The people’s faces lit up when they saw the produce, and said, “We are so thankful to have such fresh vegetables!”

  We heard that it is hard to get fresh vegetables here in Shichigahama because the town authorities have stopped accepting any more relief provisions. This is all the more reason why the fresh vegetables were appreciated so much. We will make efforts to continue to provide fresh vegetables regularly. [ii]

  This is how we have launched the new project “TA-BE-SA-IN!”. Tabesain means, in the local dialect ， “COME IN and ENJOY OUR MEAL!”

  It is probably not an overstatement to say that this project is now vital for the elderly people in the evacuation shelter. Needless to say, the meals are important to keep them healthy, but even more than that, the food that is prepared with care and delivered with a smile must surely provide much needed comfort and encouragement.

The original is here.

Reported by Ai URANO, Rescue Stock Yard (RSY, based in Nagoya) from Shichigahama, Miyagi, Northeastern Japan. 

[i] Listeners are volunteers who intently listen to and communicate with people in the shelters.

[ii] As of June 1, 2011, fresh vegetables are regularly provided to the shelter by the volunteer group in Aichi, RSY’s home town.