一般財団法人　連帯　東北・西南　RENTAI　TOHOKU-SEINAN

On Monday, March 11, 2024, at 6:00 p.m., we invited 30 of our closest friends to a dinner party at our base camp, Senmaya International Club, to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The menu for the dinner was prepared mainly by Mr. Lee, the former head chef of an authentic Chinese restaurant (in a certain hotel) and a long-time supporter of our activities. In addition, Mr. Merabi (https://www.persian.co.jp/), a close friend of ours, is good at Iranian cuisine and helped Mr. Lee immensely.

Mr. Melabi, who had prepared the food in advance at his home in Tokyo, and allowed us to ride in his car with him, helped us a lot with everything from preparation to cooking. Thank you, Mr. Melabi and Mr. Lee!

The menu began with Chinese appetizers, followed by a delicious hydroponic tomato salad provided by Mr. Takeyama, and then the main course of authentic spicy mapo tofu, followed by kebabs grilled by Mr. Merabi using an iron skewer, and we all enjoyed the savory dishes cooked on a charcoal fire.

Handmade sweets (Ms. Nagasawa), yuzu mochi (Ms. Takahashi), steamed buns (Ms. Yonezawa), apple juice (Ms. Ogata), and other after-dinner desserts were provided by everyone.

The participants, mostly from Senmaya-cho and Fujisawa-cho in Ichinoseki City, Iwate Prefecture, but also from Ishinomaki City and Kurihara City in Miyagi Prefecture and Rikuzentakata City in Iwate Prefecture, shared their thoughts and updates on the time of the disaster and what has happened since then.

When we hear the stories of people who lost their beloved families in the tsunami and have risen from the ashes, I am deeply moved by their courage and respect for their efforts. We have no experience in disaster relief, so we have been working on support activities in whatever way we can, but the greatest achievement and joy has been the strong sense of solidarity and friendship we have developed with the local people through our activities in an old house in Senmaya-cho, Ichinoseki City, Iwate Prefecture, which we acquired and set up as our base of operations and which we have named Senmaya International Club. We are very happy to have been able to experience this.

We changed the name of our organization from "RENTAI-TOHOKU" to "RENTAI　TOHOKU-SEINAN" to express our belief that Tohoku, which has been receiving support, should one day extend a helping hand to other disaster areas as well. What can Tohoku do for the victims of the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake?

We have held ecology-themed Green & White Day events at our base camp, Senmaya International Club, on May 20, 2018, June 8, 2019, and May 7, 2020, with a total of about 50 participants. (Please refer to the activity record on this website.)

Green & White Day is held annually in Rovereto, northern Italy. With an ecological theme, participants bring reusable glasses and plates and sit down to receive food on the dishes they bring in exchange for pre-purchased tickets, and the community enjoys food, conversation, and socializing until late into the night.

We had hoped to one day hold this Green & White Day event in the town of Senmaya as part of our efforts to revitalize the town, but thanks to the generous cooperation of the local community, we were able to hold the event at the Senmaya Rural Workers Welfare Center with about 300 people, including about 250 participants and 50 related people. We are very happy that the event was able to be held at there.

Nine local restaurants and bars opened their doors on the day of the event to provide food and beverages for the enjoyment of all participants. We all prepared Tomodachi Curry the day before the event and served it to the participants on the day of the event.

The vendors not only offered food and beverages, but also participation-type booths such as an e-sports experience, a nodate (tea ceremony) by Ms. Chida (Urasenke) from Senmaya, and test-rides of Toyota's MIRAI hydrogen car and a modern electrically power assisted bicycle with large tires made in China, allowing many people from children to adults to experience two of the most advanced ecological technologies. The booths were open to everyone, from children to adults.

On the stage, Hironori Sasaki played the shamisen, Mayu Musha, an elementary school student, played the trumpet, and Setsugen Yu played the erhu.

Three Ukrainians, Lyudmila and Luba, and her son, 13-year-old Jordan (a first grader in junior high school), who fled to Japan to escape the ravages of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, came all the way from their accommodation in Yokohama for a one-day visit to Senmaya. They expressed their gratitude for "helping Ukraine."

Our director also made a speech in the middle of the event, thanking the local people for the many meetings and preparations for this event, and strongly expressed his wish to hold the next Green & White Day in the shopping district of Senmaya, aiming at revitalization of the town, which is the original purpose of the event.

This event was on a scale never seen before, but thankfully, many people attended. This was all thanks to the efforts of local people who always support our activities, including Mr. Murakami, Mr. Hagisho, Ms. Nagasawa, Mr. Onodera, Mr. Ogata, and Mr. Sugawara. We were also very pleased to have many participants from Morioka City, Ichinoseki City, Hiraizumi Town, and Nishiwaga in Iwate Prefecture, and Kurihara City, Kesennuma City, and Sendai City in Miyagi Prefecture, who had been involved in our activities. Thank you very much.

This event was a first for us, with the introduction of a ticket sales system, but we were happy to see that a number of local high school students assisted in the operation of the event. We hope to make use of what we learned from this experience and assist in activities that will lead to the revitalization of the Senmaya area, with young people playing a central role.

From 18:00 on Saturday, May 20th, we had a dinner party to express our gratitude to Mr. Murakami, Mr. Hagidokoro, Mr. Onodera, Mr. Nagasawa, and Mr. Sugawara, who were very helpful in preparing event.

The cooking was done by Mr. Lee Chu-young, who worked as a Chinese chef at the familiar Tokyo Prince Hotel, and his friend Ms. Huong, who is Vietnamese. Thank you for your help from shopping to cooking in a limited time, but thank you for the very delicious food.

In the middle of the dinner party, local people gave us a few words about the event. Everyone, in the tight preparation period of one and a half months, we held five meetings lasting three hours each, searching for event locations and vendors, ticket sales, and all other preparations. However, We were able to understand that they worked hard to prepare for the event with a passion to create an event that would make everyone who participated at the same time feel glad to have come. Mr. Ichiro Murakami (Director), who has been supporting the activities of the foundation since its establishment, gave a strong encouragement, saying, "Let's do it seriously tomorrow!"

Since its establishment on May 12, 2011, we have been mainly engaged in supporting the self-reliance of the areas and people affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. We are pleased to announce that we will hold an event on May 21 as an initiative to revitalize the town of Senmaya, Ichinoseki City.

For details, please refer to the attached pamphlet.

On Saturday, March 11, at 5:30 p.m. at our base camp, Senmaya International Club, we have organized a lecture invited Mr. Chisaka Genpou, former chief priest of Chishouin Temple, as a speaker after we offered a moment of silence for the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Mr. Chisaka was the first in Japan to devise a tree burial cemetery in 1991. The reason why he started this project was that at that time there were people who were trying to increase the demand for scattering of ashes, but they did not consider the people living in the area where the ashes were scattered or the dignity of the deceased, and he felt that he could not stand idly by and watch this happen. The cemetery is now officially called "Tree Burial Park Cemetery" and is part of the Kubokawa Ihatove, where Mr. Chisaka's satoyama restoration activities take place.

When Mr. Chisaka became the chief priest of Shounji Temple (Chishouin's family temple), he felt that he had to do something about Shounji, so he worked to improve the temple grounds, which had always been his concern. He started the restoration project because he imagined that Chishouin would surely become a place full of nature if he made some changes to the temple. He said that it is important to have a love for one's hometown and to listen to the voices of the local residents. He strongly emphasized that local cities are the periphery of the body, but if they are not strong, the nation will not be able to survive.

After the lecture, Father Takahashi of Mizusawa Church, Mr. Shibuya, chief priest of Chotokuji Temple in Fujisawa Town, Ichinoseki City, and Mr. Hagisho of Matsuzawa Shrine commented that Mr. Chisaka's speech made them think about the relationship between community development and religion.

At the end of the lecture, Mr. Sata, Representative Director, also emphasized the importance for young people to seriously consider religion on some level, that is, to think about themselves, to be prepared to make their own path, and to maintain their enthusiasm for better living as well as for death. Regarding the 12th anniversary of the earthquake, he visited temporary housing in the early days after the disaster and also visited the Tohoku region every month. He said that he had not made any concrete plans for the past 12 years of the foundation activities, but had tried to think as he walked, and one thing he valued was "relationship."

After the lecture, from 6:30 p.m., we held a dinner party with about 30 local people who attended the lecture. The menu for this dinner was Sukiyaki. Mr. Ichiro Murakami, his wife, and daughter did everything from procurement of ingredients to preparation and cooking. We would like to thank them for their hard work and long hours of preparation and cooking. We sincerely appreciate their kind cooperation.

Mr. Sasa, who moved to Nishiwaga in Iwate Prefecture after retiring from a major consumer electronics manufacturer where he had worked for many years and is now engaged in research on meat processing, joined us for this dinner party. He spent a lot of time preparing roast beef, salted pork, pork and beef ham, and sausages of various flavors, which were served to the participants, all of whom enjoyed them very much. Also, for the first time, we received a dinner fee of 1,000 yen per person from the participants. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

It was a day of great joy for us to have this opportunity to interact with local people that we have built over the past 12 years. We hope that this relationship will continue for many years to come.