Reconstruction Assistance for Areas Hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake:

Bringing Back Smiles to the People

By Matsumi Aoki

 Teacher of Kokusai Hair Dressing and Beauty Art Vocational College, Tokyo

On 11^th March 2011, at about 2:46 p.m., a magnitude 9.0 earthquake centered offshore of Sanriku occurred, and the tsunami triggered by this earthquake inflicted catastrophic damage to the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Chiba along the Sanriku coast and the Kanto region including the Greater Tokyo area.

In Tokyo, where our school Kokusai Hair Dressing and Beauty Art Vocational College is located, we felt a powerful quake which none of us had experienced before.  Land liquefied, leading to traffic chaos, and so the most of us could not go home and stayed at the school that night.

It has been six months since then, but the Tohoku district (Northeast Japan), the area hard hit, has just taken the first step towards reconstruction.  As a school, we thought about what we could do to help them and decided to do volunteer activities during the summer vacation, hoping to “bring back people’s smiles to the disaster area.”

We chose Rikuzen-takata city in Iwate prefecture, which was severely affected by the great tsunami.

Many of our students wished to participate in the volunteer work, and 29 people consisting of 20 beauty therapy students and nine staff were chosen as an advance team. To make the people in the disaster area smile again, we planned with meticulous care and decided to provide facial massage, hand and foot care at five venues in Rikuzen-takata city.

So many people cooperated and co-hosted with us during the preparation, and we packed all the necessary treatment items--cot beds, stools, towels and products together with our own necessities including sleeping bags.  We set off on 21^st July for four days.

We will never forget the sight from the windows of the bus on the way to the gyms and community centres where we gave treatments.  The land has nothing left on it as a result of the tsunami which spread all over and took everything.

In six months, all the wrecks were collected and piled up high, and grass grew tall on the land where there seemed to be many shops and houses previously.

When we saw skeletons of lone standing buildings, hollow apartments and debris hanging from trees far away from the coast, we were reminded that those were all traces of the great tsunami.  It came this far and took so many things away in a second. The view, which makes everyone speechless, was outspread before us.

The participants were divided into five teams and provided treatments, mostly facials and foot and hand massage, to the afflicted people coming one after another.

We only could do short, very simple massage, but the afflicted people gave us many words of appreciation: “This is the first time I could relax after the earthquake. Thank you very much”; “My face, body and mind were refreshed and cleared”; and “I felt comforted after so long with kind warmth of hands.”  Students’ tense and uneasy faces were brightened up in a moment.

On the second day, we could listen to the stories of the people more than we did on the first day.  Very impressive ones were: “After the earthquake, the tsunami did not look like a wave but a huge, black wall with a cloud of dust, chasing us and taking everything into it”; and “I believe that God chose this land as a disaster area, because he knew about our people’s strong bond in Rikuzen-takata.”

We could realize through the words, “You have to say what you want to say now without counting on tomorrow” by those who lost everything but were still smiling cheerfully.  Everything we take for granted in daily lives needs to be appreciated.

During two days in five venues, we could work on 353 people, and the students gained lots of experience that could not be taught in class. Also, the many words of appreciation and smiles from the people reminded them of what aesthetics can do and made them proud and confident to be on the road to being a beauty therapist.

For our volunteer activities, so many people cooperated and assisted us including the local people to whom we would like to convey our gratitude.  We also strongly felt the importance of the bond between people.  Through these activities, we all could ask ourselves “what is the most important thing for a human being,” and it was an incomparable experience for us.  We will continue to assist the reconstruction for the Tohoku district.