At the Day Service Centre

 

The people assembled at the Day Service Centre today, welcomed the children with warm applause onto the stage.

 

The children acted as teaching assistants and helped the participants in making their winter greeting cards by showing them pattern and writing samples.

 

Dressed in colourful 'happy-coats' that were made out of fishing boat flags, the children performed the folk-song and -dance "Souran-bushi". Listening to their enthusiastic singing moved us deeply and cheered us up.

We held a Jonet Salon with the visitors of this Day Service Center.

On the day of the disaster (3.11), people were seeking refuge in this Center, which overnight turned into an Evacuation Shelter where people found themselves then staying for months.

Today, six-graders of the primary school nearby came to visit as part of their social science class. So they, too, joined our Salon, which had the theme of making winter greeting cards. A teacher of picture cards had come from Kyoto to spend the day with the people at the Center.

After helping to make the winter greeting cards, the children decorated potted little Christmas trees with various ornaments for people to take home as souvenirs.

Among the participants was a former school teacher, who found out to her delight while talking to the boy sitting next to her, that the boy was the grandchild of one of her former pupils.

We gave the Salon's participants various presents which we had received through donations, such as handmade caps and hats, bath-towels, body shampoo, disinfectant hand-wash, herbal juice and other items.

Donations from people around the country such as hand-towels, handkerchiefs and stationary with cartoon characters as well as soap and small toys, were divided and put into the kids' bags. There were so many presents that the kids' bags were packed full. The bags, donations themselves, were decorated with lovely patterns, from which each child chose one with a happy smile.

Children might tend to just grab such presents with a cry of "that's mine!" but during this support work the reaction of the children was very polite. 

It was moving to see.