After the flood - volunteers and friendship

One of the volunteers dispensing cold drinks and towels for tired volunteers

A very big thank you to everyone who came to help clear up in the days and weeks following the flood in Kaneyama-machi at the end of July 2011. It was very touching to see so many people working together in adversity - but then don't they always? Many came long distances from around Japan. Some travelled long hours from where they had been helping with tsunami debris. We even had volunteers who were residents of the tsunami hit areas who wanted to repay the fact that we had been volunteering in their area of Fukushima over the last three months. The tasks they undertook were usually unpleasant and tough jobs like digging out mud from between floorboards and cleaning household goods of mud, or digging out drains. It was good to be part of this culture-changing volunteer movement, with people realising, sometimes for the first time, what pleasure and satisfaction is to be had when you reach out beyond the bounds of your own life.

UK volunteers who travelled a long way from working in a tsunami-hit area

The first job was to empty the houses of the chaos of ruined furniture and tatami mats and a deep layer of mud. This was hard and filthy, and was done before any volunteers arrived from outside. The next part was to take up the flooring on everyone's ground floor and dig out the mud underneath. This had to be done as if left it would rot the wooden floors and bacteria in it might cause health problems. The underfloor areas were then sprinkled with white powder, which may have been caustic soda as it burned my skin, the fine powder settling on sweating arms and rubbing at the edges of gloves.

The hardest job - very awkward and dirty

Digging the mud out was heavy work, as it was wet, like cocoa butter or damp clay, and it was hard to manoeuvre between the floor joists. It then had to be carried outside and either piled up  or put in bags for later collection. Whoever has the contract for those bags will have made millions in Tohoku - they are used everywhere.

Fancy a go? Our kitchen, and no, that is not my cooking

Our first two volunteers were locals, members of the All Okuaizu Network

We had volunteer help from the first day. Many of the older people had family who answered the call until outsiders arrived, and my wife's uncle (our landlord), and her cousin got stuck in. We also had two guys from the All Okuaizu Network which was founded locally to respond to the 3.11 disaster and to help develop Okuaizu in the long term. We are members and I had been over to the coast near Iwaki-shi with them a couple of times to work on the tsunami damaged area just outside the nuclear evacuation zone, never thinking I'd need the same help in a few weeks.  One brought us a fridge to borrow, and he advised me not to worry about others until our house was done. This was a kind thought as I felt that I should be helping the oldest people first, and I also felt very bad that I was away volunteering at Fuji Rock in Niigata (also flooded) as part of my Strong Children art project with Fukushima's children, and couldn't get home to help until the second day.  They both worked hard to help get the mud out before moving on to the next house, and continued day after day.

What's that saying? Something about a creek and a paddle?

One of our neighbours surveying progress

People from Okuaizu are very physically strong and resilient from generations of hard work in difficult terrain and heavy snow in the winter. They are used to helping each other anyway, and can keep going when city folk would be keeling over, and they got through a prodigious amount of spadework and lifting. Some who had escaped the flood neglected their own businesses and households over weeks in order to help the older people to get their houses into at least a temporary liveable state, as many had no usable kitchen, bathroom or toilet. It was exhausting work.

The council used systems already set up to support nuclear evacuees in the previous months to send round portable stoves, instant rice and noodles, bottles of water and basic hygiene equipment, and began assessing damage and people's needs. Council workers concentrated on the public infrastructure. I remember thinking how much worse it would be for it to happen somewhere very poor without organised help - and since it happened there have been far worse floods in various places around the world where people have to fend for themselves for weeks. 

As floors were cleared, ripped up, dug out and disinfected,  upper floors were re-arranged for camping in, with various make shift arrangements and use of unaffected neighbours' facilities. The next phase was salvaging as much as possible, which wasn't much, and cleaning it all several times.

Two of my son's school staff pitch in to help clean our stuff

Dust became a worrying problem as everything dried out and the heat returned with a vengeance

There was no let up for affected households as it was very  time-consuming, and when you look at piles of your stuff covered in mud you just feel like you have to keep going every minute until it is done, otherwise when will life get back to normal? No-one anywhere likes their home and possessions despoiled, but the fact that Japanese people fastidiously preserve a complete separation between 'inside' and 'outside' made it all the harder as a taboo had been broken too. People's concentration began to suffer in the heat and there were several injuries, and people began to get more and more tired. We were all a bit dazed, especially on top of the underlying tension there had been for the previous months because of Fukushima Daichi. What a year.

The cavalry arrived after a week or so in the form of hundreds of people from across Japan, organised into teams and allotted tasks by a volunteer centre set up in a nearby village. Everybody knew the drill as most had already volunteered somewhere else in Tohoku.

Volunteer squad from further afield

Various vans providing refreshments and good cheer were doing the rounds, and the spirit between everybody was pretty special, people couldn't do enough. This will be one of the great positive legacies of the 3.11 tragedy for Japan, and it will be interesting to see how all these shared experiences based on volunteering affect society over the next few years. It changes you.

Some of our stuff headed for the tip

Watching possessions that you have allowed to become part of your identity disappearing into a dump truck changes you too. It is a timely reminder about priorities and life's temporary bargains with chaos. Now, every time I buy something I just think "Yes, more dump filler." What really matters? It was difficult watching everyone breathing in the billowing dust that we know contains  a certain amount of caesium 137. There was no way of keeping it out, and you can't keep clean either. As I write in January 2012 the government's controversial policy of 'decontamination' rather than evacuation means that thousands of workers and volunteers will be going through this same process: handling debris, soil, leaves and mud, and breathing dust in areas of eastern Fukushima with substantial levels of radiation. There is evidence that it won't even work sufficiently well, and we won't know for years what the health impacts will be. In the meantime fathers, daughters, sons and brothers will be risking their health - and to me that really matters.

The way friends rallied round was a great comfort in this time uncertainty and worry. At least our son was away from the dust being looked after for several weeks by the Ichikawas, parents of one of his school friends - so kind! At a time when there was a bit of family pressure about what should be done, in what priority order,  and exactly how it should be done (you know how that goes...), at least my friends turned up to help in any way they could. Like Iwata-san, Tokyo-based museum producer and cyclist, who gave up his weekend in the middle of a project rescuing and cataloguing the collection of Sendai museum. He looked cool in his rescue duds! And Shigemura-san, local friend, fellow cyclist and good egg who likes nothing better than helping, even on an ordinary day. They helped clear the debris-filled garden and did some cleaning up.

Iwata-san and Shigemura-san: heavy lifting and washing up a specialty

Then there was Yoshida-san, another friend from Arai cycling club 250km away in Saitama who gave me a weekend of his time in the big push to get what was left of the house perfectly clean after everything had been taken out ready for our move to Kansai. Not the most interesting or rewarding form of volunteering, not much to see for your effort compared to digging mud or moving wreckage, but he did it with a will and was good company. And Abé-san at the garage, who helped trying to find us a roof-rack and wouldn't take payment as usual. Useful though everyone's practical help was, the most important thing was the feeling that they had gone out of their way just out of simple friendship. They were just there. This was something else that really mattered to me.

So to everyone I say again, thank you. It was great to be a part of it, and I will remember as long as my memory lasts.

The Tadami Flood, Fukushima, July 2011

Destroyed bridge on the Tadami railway line below Honna dam above our village

As if it wasn't enough, communities already very worried by the ongoing releases of radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant were struck by record rainfalls at the end of July. Over the 72 hours until midday on Saturday 30th July, 700mm (27.5 inches) of rain fell in 72 hours in the Tadami area of Okuaizu, western Fukushima. At least 4 people died, 6,400 people were evacuated from their homes, and 500 people were cut off by floodwater, including those downstream from Tadami like our community in Kaneyama and in Yanaizu.

Our street (photo from council website)

The damage was worst in Tadami town, 30km up river, with many houses completely destroyed. Everyone on our street, only a few metres from the river, lost everything on the first (ground) floor. Rice fields and allotments that people had worked hard on were destroyed. Apart from the fact that most residents are more than 70 years old and it hit them very hard, it is sad that so much family history was lost. Over and above having your home full of mud, most painful for many people was loosing the Butsodan, the Buddhist  shrine to the family ancestors which keeps them a living presence in the home and provides continuity, sometimes over hundreds of years. Some of the houses were like domestic museums. The framed photos of the more recent dead were fortunately above the floodline. You can imagine them looking impassively down from near the ceiling as the water rose towards them. If the ancestors have seen anything, they have seen it all over the centuries, and floods have come and gone. The portrait I drew of my next door neighbour survived, and so did he, but he had to spend the next few weeks in hospital after damaging his shoulder in the clear-up. He will have been so frustrated not to be able to continue helping with the cleanup.

Below Honna dam concrete river banks were breeched, washing away house foundations and destroying rice fields and allotments.

So why did it happen? Floods are as old as water itself, and of course global warming has been accompanied by extreme weather around the world, often much worse than this in scale and casualties. But this was an 'accident' waiting to happen, and one that was a whisker away from being very much worse. Living a few metres from the river, I was very aware that flooding was a risk. This is true of any river, but there are five dams upriver from the village, the one at the top being huge. I was told that executives from Tohoku electric who own several of the dams had been doing the rounds post 3.11 trying to salvage the reputation of nuclear power -  a lost cause in Fukushima of course. Apparently they were asked if there had been any checks on the dams following the huge earthquake of 11th March. No, no extra tests, but they were sure everything was fine, and there was no risk. Of course if lots of people asked for tests they supposed they could do them. Extraordinary, and very reminiscent of the complacency of Tepco.

Concerned, we had also visited the Kaneyama council offices in May on returning from our temporary self-evacuation. As well as pressing them to urgently buy their own radiation testing equipment, instigate more detailed testing for food and soil, to source school meals from safer areas of Japan, and to draw up a plan for the emergency evacuation of children in the event of further explosions at Fukushima Daichi, I raised the issue of flood risk. I asked them what the evacuation plan was, to tell us what the warning siren sounded like, and where we were supposed to go if there was a problem. No response. I also personally raised it with the Mayor, who lived on our street. No problem , no problem. No radiation risk, and the dams were safe. Big smiles. Oh really? After a major earthquake and many aftershocks, with no extra structural checks, and no practice drills or information for residents?

Destroyed rail bridge above our house. The blue plastic covers a landslip beneath a neighbour's house

Often woken up in the night by aftershocks, I lay awake half expecting to hear the rush of water. Would we get a warning? We discussed what we would do, and I told my son to run fast for the mountainside, even if he was on his own. As it turned out I was away from home, and frustratingly I wasn't able to be there to help during a very frightening night waiting from a friend's house to see how high the water would get. The local fire and disaster volunteers thankfully did a great job of getting everyone out of their houses promptly, not letting anyone linger to save possessions, which must have saved some casualties. They have my deep respect and grateful thanks. This can't have been easy with so many elderly and frail residents, some of them bedridden.

Destroyed bridge at Yokota. Residents on the right bank had to be helicoptered to safety

After the flood it began filtering through that it was the opinion of many, through family members working on the dams, that bad decisions may have again contributed to disaster. In this case it is possible that the early and gradual release of water building up from the extreme rainfall  could have prevented the flood. This was reputedly delayed in order to keep generating electricity as long as possible. Then when it was clear that danger levels were fast approaching, the sudden release possibly added to severity of the flooding. Could it be that pressure to keep generating electricity while most of Japan's nuclear reactors are shut down contributed to this delay? No doubt they were 'following the manual.'

A very dangerous element was added in the shape of a chain of several large, yellow, iron barges used for dredging that swept down the valley smashing bridges  and damaging dams as they went. One dam could no longer use one of it's gates after it was struck.  Local opinion was that legally these should not have been in the river in the wet summer period for this very reason - they should only have been used in the winter, when there is less of a flood risk as all the moisture falls as snow. It seems that some of the workers at one of he the dams thought there was a serious risk of a dam failing completely, as they ran away. It must have been truly terrifying, especially when the barges hit.

Bridge carrying main road up the valley smashed at Yokota

It also emerged that the council' evacuation plan did not take into account that a dam might fail. When the dams were built any houses by the original course of the river were moved to at least 3 metres above the new water level, including ours.  Residents and the council were told that a serious flood was now 'Impossible.' Again, sound familiar? So guess where the evacuation moved people to? Unaccountably, an old aged persons' home by the river, only slightly higher than the problem areas, despite the availability of various large buildings nearby in the mountains, like the Ski Centre.  If a dam had actually failed there would have been a large number of deaths. As dam failure began to look possible there was a frantic attempt to  move the people who had been taken there somewhere else. This strange plan echoes what could be called the 'evacuation into slightly less danger' policy taken by the prefectural authorities, who have built emergency housing for evacuees from inside the 20km zone around Fukushima Daichi as near as 35km away - in Iwaki.  Again, this is hard to understand when there is a choice. Iwaki is an area many families have chosen to self-evacuate away from due to the elevated radiation levels.

A home left hanging over space

Luckily, the worst did not happen, though the following weeks were very tough for everyone, camping out on their top floor without kitchens or bathrooms, and beginning to tackle the horrendous smelly mess that any flood leaves in its wake. Difficult for anyone, but particularly exhausting for the majority in their 70's and older.

For us, it was the last straw. We had been trying to hang on to living in Fukushima despite the daily worry for the long-term health of our son, because of our love for the people and the place. Not having a functioning house, and realising that the riverside location was no longer tenable in the long term, it gave us the push to make the move away that was inevitable but wrenchingly sad.

There was still no sign of the necessary radiation safeguards and protections being put in place for children, still far too big a gap between information from the authorities and that available from independent sources, still difficulty in sourcing food from other areas of Japan with much lower radiation, and still no sign of transparency or clear food labelling, just more of the same simplistic 'It's safe' propaganda. Not good enough. And when it rained, the radiation levels beneath our eves were 50% higher, meaning that releases were still continuing. After all that worry it would have been ironic indeed if it had been hydro-electricity that had finished us off.

Flood debris and wrecked graves in the family plot, Nishitani

We will probably never know the degree to which human error, both in institutional form or our own addictions to energy intensive comforts, contributed to making this, and other floods like it, worse. It was certainly the worst in living memory along the Tadami river, and some of the elders said that before the dams were built it was never as severe. Because of the way the energy market is organised, people never even saw cheaper electricity for the extra risk they accepted. That is something that could change if hard-fought reforms wanted by the majority are achieved and micro-generation owned by communities is viable. 50 years ago when the dams were built people wanted to contribute to the modernisation of Japan. For us, as for many people in Japan, the recent disasters have washed away more than just houses. They have eroded trust in the government and institutions that are supposed to protect us and our children, just as they have proved once again that individual people and communities will rally round and work wonders in supporting each other and clearing up the mess in times of dire need. If only we could get better at stopping it happening in the first place.

With especial thanks the family that provided emergency accommodation on the night of the flood and looked after my son while we were cleaning up the house. Also thanks to everyone who came to help with the clear up or checked to see that we were all right - we will never forget! We think about everyone in Kaneyama every day.

Saved by noodles

Unidentified wild mushrooms, rarely seen in the shops and gathered on the mountains by old hands whose knowledge I trust (almost) completely, glistened under red grains of schimi on a hot bed of udon noodles. No ordinary bowl of noodles this, it sat on the trestle table on the playground of a disused school which had lasted from the 1870's to the 1970's. All around were stalls and the ear-splitting distortion of an antiquated public address system not designed to take loud music. I ate with one finger in my bad ear. We were all here to help get the village back on the map and back on it's feet, and what better in a food-obsessed nation than a noodle festival to draw in the salivating punters?

A landslide in the spring downpours smashed down on a snow shed and made the main valley road south of Tamonashi unsafe to use. Rather more important than the inconvenience this caused to cyclist like myself, it severed the whole village from much of the tourist traffic that brings income to those who run accommodation, shops, and restaurants. Commuters had an extra hour of mountain roads to negotiate twice a day. Seven months of risky engineering work later, the road is open again, and the noodle festival was in full swing, run by volunteers from all over the area, and with lots of familiar faces behind the stalls.

Other dishes of a less culinary nature included the team of dancers having a lot of fun in their Kung Fu - looking costumes, leaping about on the gravel to blaring backing tracks, which must have echoed up the mountainsides to confused squirrels and bears disturbed in their mid-day snoozes up trees.

Upstairs in the old school, three rooms are a haunting home-made museum, each thing with its own hand written luggage label tied on with string. Many are still in use today, Aizu being itself a kind of living museum, but others a mystery. The walls carried fading photographs of the people for whom these objects were simply useful. The dusty clothes, patched and worn, sometimes, like the ankle length jacket, made from old futons and kimonos, were rawly personal, imprinted with the wearer's shape.

Uncomfortable information. A hand made aid for teaching anatomy

In the late afternoon musicians began to play to a scattering of people in the school gym.  I wondered where the young people were, as this gig was clearly aimed at them. Were they at home playing with their DS's, or in the shopping centres in Wakamatsu? When they dream of life in the cities isn't it just this kind of thing that they dream of going to? And yet when they have it here, they don't come.

Armed to a man or woman with acoustic guitars and the occasional harmonica, the performers were skilled singer-song writers in the efficient but somewhat off-the-peg mould that often afflicts many genres of Japanese popular music. If they were less skilled might it be better? Then they would have to invent their own ham-fisted and strange way of doing things and whatever is in them could come straight out.

The first two boys were winsome, poppy and sweet, the second a little more there, but the last performer was really good of her kind, though in all cases it was probably best not to understand the lyrics, like opera.

She played beautifully constructed slow acoustic songs with well judged and varied dynamics, her voice haunting and moving, creating that stillness and focus in the room that tells you the audience are no longer in it, but have floated out somewhere to meet the music. She deserved the young people to be here.

Bowing back

Every evening the spider outside our living room repairs the day's damage to it's web. It is made of a few hawser-like threads stretched from the porch roof to floor, an impressive distance. If you walk into one inadvertently you would be shocked by the strength of those tiny threads.

Across the road a man is suspended from a cable, pulling himself along and paying out a wire. The council is paying the installation costs of fibre optic broadband, providing a 200mbs  service to every house for the internet, telephones and television. This will hopefully increase the range of people who may be able to work from this beautiful place through the internet. As it stands most people either find work in construction, maintenance and road repair, in seasonal casual work for the council, or tourism - or have to leave to find it.

I have a chastened admiration for the people I see working in the oppressive heat and humidity that has killed 132 people through heatstroke acrosss Japan this summer, with 31,579 people hospitalized since May 31 (Fire and Disaster Management Agency). Working in full uniform and safety gear, especially on concrete and tarmac that intensify the heat, must be killing - yet you never see anyone shirking and they all seem to do their work thoroughly and with good heart.

The  toll it takes is clear if you see them in their lunch break. Usually they eat then take a short nap, laying out mats on the roadside or in the cab of vehicles. Recently though, I passed a group of men exhausted by the heat whose heads had dropped in sleep where they sat eating, the insects shrieking in the trees overhead and trucks thundering by inches away.

The people who direct traffic around roadworks have it especially hard in the heat, standing in full sun all day in one spot, with nothing to distract them, burning to a deep brown. I can't imagine the pay is good, and it is work often done by the elderly who can't do heavy work any more. Yet they do it with precision and care, bowing to each driver as they pass. Bowing back is for me anything but a formality.

McChildhood and the real McCoy

What happened when we asked local children where they would like to live when they grow up.

The hydro-electric dams across the valley were unexpectedly popular

At a recent after school club session we decided to ask the children (aged 7 to 9) to think about where they thought they might like to live when they grew up - here in Kaneyamamachi, in a nearby town or city like Wakamatsu, or in Tokyo. It is important that children are involved in thinking about this, as by the time they reach adulthood the exodus from the countryside will effect them more than anyone. We used a decision line method, with two opposing options at each end - the children were asked to stand where they would like to live. They then gave their reasons for standing where they did, and afterwards made drawings of what they liked about where they chose.  The session was enlivened by the presence of a film crew from TV Asahi, who were filming us as part of the travelogue series 'Beautiful Japan.'

No surprise that the school's outdoor swimming all summer is popular

Nearly half of them chose to go to the Tokyo end of the decision line, with three in the middle opting for the nearer towns, and nearly half standing at the Kaneyamamachi end of the line, predicting that they would stay here.

It was interesting that the Tokyo group couldn't immediately think why they had chosen to be there. With some prompting, they came up with shopping, Disneyland, and in the case of my son, Sunshine 60, a huge building with a panoramic viewing floor. They could think of what they might play with or eat, but they didn't really know what work they might do. When it came to making drawings of what they liked about the city they were really nonplussed, and sat blankly staring at white paper while the group who wanted to stay here launched exuberantly into their drawings. In the end some of what they drew could equally be experienced here -  a hamburger, some dogs, fashionable clothes. One drew the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, another a skyscraper. 

McChildhood comes to Japan: dumming down one of the healthiest diets in the world

It felt a little as if they were the puppets of television advertisers, with invented needs that could vaguely somehow be met by Tokyo, or perhaps were simply wanting what they felt they couldn't normally have living in the mountains. The most articulate little mite, all of seven years old and tiny, drew a big blue question mark:

He said that he knew that he didn't really know what Tokyo was like, but that was why he wanted to live there - to find out. An amazing thought for his age.

The group who wanted to stay in this area new exactly why they liked it. Swimming! Skiing! My family! The dams! The food! Stag beetles! And in the discussion they launched enthusiastically into defending Kaneyamamachi. My favourite drawing was of the child's house (with a yellow roof) connected to all the other houses in their village by paths, which seemed to express perfectly the closeness of the community and the warmth of feeling for children.

The village- wide web

It was rewarding and thought provoking to see one of Japan's major issues, the continued centralisation of life in two big cities and the emptying of the countryside, played out in the imaginations of children. Before long it will be a choice they will face for real, and one that may be determined by the practical necessities of work and money rather than personal preference. In the meantime I hope they can have a say in what happens, while enjoying what must be one of the best places anywhere to grow up. Childhood's real McCoy, beautiful, innocent and healthy in mind and body.

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Being picky

Elite SWAT litter picking team (Shall We All Try?)

Try organising a litter picking session in my home town in England and you risk being branded a 'do gooder,' which is a somewhat confusing insult when you think about it. Go on, think about it. Group and community activity is one of the things that suffers in urban life - possibly because anonymity and keeping yourself to yourself is one of the freedoms of being in a city. All being well, the city dweller has their own network, based on work or a shared interest, that creates a virtual village, albeit geographically scattered.

It has its major fairground attractions, but the price of living a door-to-car existence and not knowing your neighbours can also be a kind of brittle loneliness and a disconnectedness from the ground beneath your feet. Who do you know better? People on television, or your neighbours?  You can't ask Brad Pitt to feed the cat while you are away, and Jennifer Aniston is unlikely to attend your birthday barbeque. And that sofa dumped on the corner and the litter blowing around the street? Probably the council will see to it. Probably. Someone else, anyway.

In Kaneyama-machi today was litter-picking day. The area is divided into villages, and the villages into 'hans,' small sections responsible for their own patch. News of this kind travels fast (without the help of the internet) via an information clipboard which is read then handed on to the next house, and a village newsletter. Just to make sure, an announcement system  echoes round the mountains, chiming at 6am, 12 noon, and 9pm, and adds news of festivals, fire, flood and bear sightings, filling in any gaps. There is also a thriving grapevine. When we first arrived last year, I went for a run at lunchtime. When my wife phoned her mum 250km away in Tokyo at 4pm that day, she already knew. Running in the rain is big news, apparently, and anonymity is assuredly not assured. They are installing a fibre-optic high speed internet cable this year, but I'm not sure it will speed things up that much. Old style analogue valley-wide-web-cams have a thousand eyes and five hundred mouths.

At 5.45am everyone gathers at their village hall, then splits off to deal with their patch. At first I thought there couldn't be much to find. It is a small village and everyone here is pretty tidy, but we all managed to pick up enough to fill a bag, mainly with cans and bottles chucked out by passing motorists, the dirty gits. As funny as the contradictory need for both privacy and community is the droll love of seeking out beautiful places, then despoiling them in a casual, trivial, unconscious sort of way. The window winds down, the hand extends, the coffee can arcs outwards, and is forgotten before it hits the ground. Is the countryside the unconscious of the city? Errmmm, excuse me, hello....does this belong to you?

For myself, I am enjoying knowing my neighbours a little better. In our little group were the grandfather of a boy my son plays with, the grandmother from the house behind ours whose granddaughter plays too, the husband of the woman who runs the shop (related to my wife in some complicated way), the mayor's wife (spotted shovelling snow off their high roof in the winter), the woman from across the road (spotted high up a tree hacking at a branch - a theme is developing), my next door neighbour who took me to gather wild vegetables last year, and two ladies it will be much easier to get to know now that I met them doing this. While I am being picky, I will pick this. I can always go to the city to behave badly.

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Tokyo homeless

Tokyo, not quite so cool when you are unemployed

That most of the men sleeping rough in Tokyo's streets and parks were born in beautiful country areas of Japan, like Aizu, somehow makes it more painful. They had to leave home because there were too many children to feed in the post-war years of struggle, there was no prospect of work locally, and farming was in any case in decline. Now after years of hard work in the construction industry and other areas of temporary and insecure employment, they are too old or ill to compete in the recession-shrunk labour market. With a dire lack of social housing and a draconian rented sector it is not hard to fall off the housing ladder here - and the bottom rungs are broken. Large deposits are required, and a guarantor, both a tough ask for people with no savings or family support. The vulnerably housed are also preyed on by various scamming businesses which turn a profit and increase insecurity and poverty.

Everyone is busy or on a night out - but you will be out all night

Younger people are appearing in the parks at feeding stations in greater numbers too, their 'bed' of choice often being a chair in an all night internet cafe. Young people in the countryside still suffer from 'The Tokyo illusion,' according to Tsuyoshi Inaba. He is a founder member of Shinjuku Renrakukai, Japan's first homeless support group, and chairs Moyai, an NPO that tries to provide and campaign for routes back into accommodation and a semblance of ordinary life. He explained their unrealistic expectations. 'We get lots of calls from young people in the countryside. They are not getting on with their family, so they say they are thinking of coming to Tokyo to work. We tell them not to come, as there is very little work here, and they might have to sleep rough.'

How about here? There is enough space, but no cover and it might rain

I joined the homeless patrol on a cold night in Shinjuku last week, and the changes over the ten years since I first did so were obvious, with a wider age range, fewer shelters allowed in the parks, and more people bedding down wherever they could on the pavement and under bridges with nothing more than cardboard boxes, if that. Although campaigners have succeeded in persuading the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to provide more temporary apartments in return for negotiating a reduction in people living in the parks, it isn't enough. The recession has made it worse, and NGO's like Moyai are under severe pressure from the numbers asking form help.

Maybe here? Too near the station, the police won' t like it

After 400 people had been fed, three teams assembled to check the whole Shinjuku area. They consisted of homeless and ex homeless people, volunteers and group members. They count the numbers sleeping rough, and speak to everyone to make sure they know how to ask for further assistance, to identify people who might need medical treatment, and to make the social connections that make life on the street more bearable.

Ok, this is under a bridge - not too many people

I was angry all over again at the gulf between the often negative perception of homeless people in Japan and the reality. This was ironically underlined by one of the men sleeping rough with a mate in a quiet side street. "When I was working building the subways I used to look down on the homeless and fight them."

I was particularly impressed with a man standing in a compound just big enough to lie down in, a futon walled with cardboard against the wind . Next to him was a man lying on the bare pavement, tightly swaddled like an Egyptian mummy from head to foot, even his face eerily covered. "I am OK," said the first man, "I have  a shelter, but I am really worried about this man next to me - he doesn't have anything."

This is it for the night. Move on in the morning if you are left alone that long

This need to care for others is apparently a deeply ingrained part of our self-hood. It is abundant in country areas like Aizu and it is surprisingly intact on the streets here. Some men were simply sitting down on benches. You can't lie on them as the authorities have kindly bolted dividers on any horizontal surface. One man on his own on a park bench was grinning broadly in the dark. A thin mewling cry went up, and between his big hands was cradled a new-born kitten. He was feeding it with milk from a straw. Others were in a blanket-covered box, and he reached deep into his coat and brought another out from his armpit, then more from pockets. They had been abandoned in the park, and their new parent, abandoned himself, was going to see to it that they lived. He didn't need anything from us just then, and we left him, still smiling.

Another dash of incongruous white moved in the darkened park: a white rabbit. Abandoned three years ago, it has survived against the odds surrounded by hungry people. Inaba-san said "They often say that they want to eat it, but no-one ever does." Well, perhaps there is nothing so strange about that - it certainly isn't as strange as one of the richest countries in the world letting its young and old people down so badly.

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Flexible thinking

On education in Kaneyama-machi

The future's so bright, I've gotta wear shades...School ski day

Mr Star (Hoshi-san), our delightfully named local education department head, kindly invited me us to talk to one of their regular network meetings about our impressions of education in the area, and to describe English education in contrast to it. The mayor, councillors, headteachers, teachers, council officers and members of the public were in attendance, seated around a large, neat square of document filled tables. They had pens drawn and at the ready, and they weren't afraid to use them.

From the outset I made it clear - oh, all right then, M-san did, in Japanese - that it is not for outsiders to make pronouncements - it is always more useful to explore possibilities together based on questioning and open discussion. Cue an uncomfortable silence, fiddling with paperclips and the sound of the snow creaking below the windows. And this Japanese comfort with known structures (for example the lecture) and discomfort with challenging, free-flowing improvisational responding, became the central theme of the day. To their credit, in the end everyone engaged fully, and some very interesting themes emerged.

'Natural' education and academic study

Among these were the difference between academic, fact-based learning and 'natural education,' which combines traditional study with value added by all of the community's resources.  Kaneyam-machi (as well as having very committed teachers and passionate head-teachers, and wonderfully small class sizes), is particularly rich in natural education.  The contribution made by good relationships between people, the extraordinary physical environment, high levels of volunteering and group co-operation (which often involves children), and the relatively intact traditions of family life, are all strong. 

We can learn as much from each other as we do from our teachers: now get off my neck

However, the time in which these can be experienced by children is limited by the heavy hand of central government control. Text books are chosen centrally, membership of extra clubs is compulsory, and there is an increasing burden of homework and pressure to succeed academically as children get older, culminating in 'make or break' attempts to get into the right university. To this end, a great deal is sacrificed, usually with parents connivance, with city-based children attending cramming schools. A few succeed, and a few drop out all together. There are few second chances in Japanese education.  

One of the local dads present bemoaned this pressure, and thinks the extra work and extra clubs are too hard. What he wants for his own children is that any academic ambition comes from them. He believes openness is more important, but wondered if I worried about my son's future if he grows up here without extra tuition. I don't. Another was sad that his children don't go out and play, but mainly stay at home, even here. He works long hours and does housework, and he finds it hard to make the time to play with them. Hoshi-san had wondered why it was that although many children came to the many activities for families that the council arrange, few parents stay to join in themselves.

My thoughts were that these two connected problems: of pressure to work long hours both academically and in working life; and of lack of parental involvement with children, are related. They stem from what in my view is a mistakenly mechanistic idea about how to do something well, and about what effective education really means.

Many economies in the world succeed without the need for crushing work hours, as humans can only work efficiently for a limited time each day. Most renowned educational epochs - early Oxford and Cambridge, Islamic early science, and Chinese scholarship for example - were not founded on pressured learning by rote. And some of the most valuable education occurs outside schools altogether. A research study by Charles Desforges for the UK government collated reliable research findings to look for overall recommendations. Surprisingly, it found that involved parents, that actively engaged with their children, made more difference to children's education than whether they attended a good school or not. In particular, he concluded that 'At home talk,' that is, simply talking to  children, made the most difference of all.

High level education: some serious dad time

All three of the headteachers try and organise non-academic activities that connect children with a whole range of experiences beyond the classroom and 'add value to learning', from growing vegetables and rice, to visiting high-tech factories, to high level arts and science presentations, involving everyone from professionals to local elders in their vegetable plots. Who, for example could forget sharing the interior of a giant black plastic bag with fifty slightly worried children to demonstrate the properties of air, for example? Not me, for one.

Junior school science demonstration: a bag full of children...

What do children here need from their education?

This area, with it's geographical isolation, it's  ageing population and limited opportunities for traditional job structures, has special challenges. And as with anywhere, it has to cope with the speed with which the world of work is changing due to technology, and the way in which free market globalisation means that capital chases the cheapest labour ever more quickly. Add to that climate change, diminishing resources and  financial structures that are not fit for purpose, and it would take a very brave person to predict the future awaiting our children.

One of the councillors felt that if you know your past, you know your future. A local craftswoman thought it very important that children experience the pleasure of making things with their fingers. A beautiful elderly lady felt that each person's personal philosophy affects everyone, and that it is really important that children learn to connect to the community. Another councillor felt that fewer children are living in households with several generations where they can learn from their grandparents about all kinds of things - even how to use knives.

Making things with your fingers: its a bear necessity, right? One of my one hour workshops at the after school club

Flexibility, thinking skills and emotional intelligence
My own view was that all those things are of course very  important, particularly in terms of individual and group identity. However, the most protective and useful ability for children to grow up with is the ability to think flexibly, underpinned with emotional intelligence. The ability to respond creatively to change is the best insurance in an uncertain world. Fixed curricula with little chance to discuss, ask challenging questions, or freely explore each others minds, do not provide this.

Change is ineviatable, and attempting to predict it is risky. Training children to accept and follow rigid patterns based on an assumed future, rather than to innovate solutions for any situation, risks condemning them to struggle and redundancy.

You can be taught engineering in a classroom, or you can learn it for yourself on a riverbank - problem solving Kaneyama style

Of course the local schools have to deal with the centralised legal and financial structures placed upon them, and have some pressing practical issues to deal with too. The primary school in Kawaguchi will finally be renovated to be more earthquake proof this year.  The one in Yokota has no receptionist and teachers have to share any work that needs doing. Having to teach two year groups together makes time management very difficult. The middle school finds that it is difficult to put on interesting extra-curricula activities now that the school bus leaves earlier to cope with the recent merge with another school. The high school is keen to improve it's levels, but everything is more difficult with small numbers. The headteacher said that "Flexibility is a really important idea, but we as a school need to be able to demonstrate it too." Not easy in those conditions.

A elder who voluntarily runs a community venue said that he very much liked the ideas of philosophy, thinking skills and intelligence for children, and that it was important to think in  a long term way about these. He felt that what is needed is an 'interactive village,' and that two things are missing from the community - women and children.

I really appreciated learning from every ones' passion and thought for getting things right for children here, and it confirmed for me that this is the best possible place for my son's early education, both natural and academic. Chocho-san (the mayor) wound up the meeting... well he brought it to a close, he didn't actually annoy anyone....It turned out to be a far reaching gaze into the future, and a more radical one than I had risked.

"In fifty years time there is only one thing that I am sure about: I won't be here any more. I think that all the dams will have gone, and the Tadami river will be returned to its natural state. Electricity will all be generated by solar power. I think there won't be money any more, we will do things differently." He could well be right, but I wouldn't  bet on him missing it  - there are an awful lot of people well over a hundred in this village...

Viva flexibility! Now everyone get in two rows for the photo

Here are a few quotes on related themes:

Insanity is doing things the way they have always been done and expecting the results to be different.
Theodore Eischeid

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin

 

If you want to know your past - look into your present conditions.
If you want to know your future - look into your present actions.
Buddhist Saying

 

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Sir Winston Churchill 

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
Henry Ford

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