YF3 x Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office

Today was my very first volunteering experience in Japan! Myself along with 11 other university volunteers signed up with Youth For 3.11 to sort and loaded up eight - ten ton trucks worth of donated goods to be sent off to Tohoku. It was such a great experience getting to know other volunteers who are around the same age as me. Many had family and friends who's homes were washed away by the tsunami or were forced to evacuate because they're homes were within the 20km radius of the fallout zone. It was such a different experience - really hard to describe in words, because up until now this was just something I saw on TV. But hearing stories from volunteers about their experience and their family's experiences just made everything come alive. 

All 12 of us spent the morning wheeling out boxes after boxes from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office storage rooms into trucks.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office

first storage room

trucks are filled to the rim!!

From here the trucks are sent to another storage in the city where all the donations are collected and sent off in bigger trucks

We're all lined up waiting to be loaded up

each box has been sorted and labeled by volunteers and before we load it on the truck each one has to be recorded down

 

 

 

 Something that I saw right away was the fact that these boxes had many winter items in it (for example stoves, scarves, heating pads etc). I asked why they were out of season and the coordinator told me that these donations were from March right after the earthquake happened. At the time there were more people donating than people sorting and distributing therefore these were the last of what they could not send up a almost 3 months ago. These had been stored away unable to leave the city because of the lack of transportation. It really made me realize how much organization it takes to actually donate items. Many boxes were filled with winter clothes which will probably end up stored away again in another building because no one will want that in the summer. But it's such a waste thinking that if only these things were transported a few months earlier people it would have been so useful. I also noticed that some things that were still not sorted into boxes were lying around in the room still unopened. We found really random things... 

What the....?

Giant kimono?!?!

In the beginning I think that people were just sending whatever they had in their homes including this giant kimono - sleepingbag thing? We found these things stored away in their original boxes untouched from March. But the problem before was that people would literally send anything and everything without labeling or sometimes even washing clothes before they sent it. So then it was pretty much up to us to decide if it was really worth sending or not (the kimono didn't make the cut). Since space is limited on the trucks we want to send the most efficient things to the shelters that wont end up being waste. It was really sad to see somethings that didn't make the cut because I could see that people who sent it were really caring and wanting to help but without proper guidance things were just being thrown away without even leaving the city. Volunteering made me really realize and appreciate all the organization that goes on behind the scenes that make these things happen.