I’m
finally back with some posting, traveling and blogging is HARD, so, all those
Travel bloggers out there: I respect you even more now.
I should
start by writing about the WorkCamp we (me and my sister) did in Hanawa aka
Hanawa City, it was a 2 weeks Work Camp where we were going to “Make Toros
(Paper Lanterns) with children from the community”, yup, that’s the catch of
the camp, I thought we would be working with the children for those 2 weeks and
it turned out different….
We spend
2 days in Tokyo before leaving for the camp, and coming from Mexico City, it
wasn’t much of a change, except for the insane weather, Tokio was HOT but still
a city and we were not ready for what was waiting for us in Hanawa.
We took
a Shinkansen train from Tokyo -> Koriyama (in Fukushima) and then transfer to a Local train
to Iwaki-Hanawa, the 1st train was 1 hour and then we had to wait
almost 2 hours for the next train, the local train was a small train and it
took for ever (or 3 hours), I’m glad we decided to travel light and leave most
of our luggage in Tokyo, it was easier to go from one place to the next one J.
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| Hello Iwaki-Hanawa Station |
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| Weird pic at Koriyama Sta. |
Of
course, when we arrived at Iwaki-Hanawa, the Camp Leader was already waiting
for us with some other Campers and an older man w/his 2 daughters, little did
we know, he would be with us most of the camp taking pictures non-stop lol.
After some other campers came, we took off towards our accommodation, Hanawa City
Hall’s GYM, yup, we were sleeping on a Gym, a not bigh enough gym were the 14
of us slept for the 15 days we were there, one side for girls and the other for
boys, not quite fair since we were 8 girls and 6 boys and all the other girls
had big suitcases and decided to make their own closets there, Ah!, I also
should notate that there was no division between the Girls-Boys sides, by the
end of the camp most of us girls were sleeping almost side to side, kind of
uncomfortable when it’s 30°C when you wake up at 6-7am, anyway, after leaving
our stuff at the CampStation (the gym), we went to the Public swimming
pool/showers, we had to walk 20 minutes to get there, not that a 20 minute walk
is bad, but when you go to take a shower and walk those 20 minutes back, you
get hot and sweaty again…. Oh, and did I mention there are no Western style
toilets at the Camp Station?, there’s only 1 at Hanawa’s City Hall and it’s ony
available from 9 to 9, and yes, you guessed it right, this was my 1st
time using an occidental toilet (TMI?? Lol), all this freaked me out and I
wanted to run away, I made up a Code-word and told my sister, if you want to
leave this place FOR REAL, just let me know cuz I’m ready to go, I had only
been there for an hour and I was already thinking about leaving, I just felt
out of place, almost everyone spoke some Japanese except for me and my
sister, and most of them were
Crazy-in-love-with-Japan.
We were
14 Campers:
The
Leader: Alex (aka Bebé) a Korean/Japanese with a weird sense of humor, but still
fun at times.
Sub
Leader: Go, a 22 y/o Japanese who has traveled Europe doing workcamps, he
sings, dances, has an awesome hair and is just fun to be around, although he is
also very quiet and loves reading.
The
Japanese Girls:
--Yuki
from Chiba, fun, always smiling but her lack of English skills and my lack of
Japanese made it difficult for us to talk more.
--Risa
(pronounce Lisa), a 16 y/o from Osaka, Highschool student, almost no English
but hella fun to be with, scared the heck out of me when did an impression of
Sadako (The girl from The Ring) on one of our first nights at the camp, taught
me useful words in Japanese like Oshiri (butt), Opai (Boob) and is 1 of the 4
Tomodachi=Friends, also, her Spanish accent is very good.
--Mai
aka Roberta Gato, 22 y/o from a town close to Osaka, 1/3 Japanese, 1/3 French
and 1/3 Mexican (not really), she lived in France for a while and can Speak
French, traveled to Spain and knew a couple phrases in Spanish but learned much
more in the Camp and that’s how she got her Spanish name, VERY good English
skills, easy to talk to, fun to be around and enjoys rolling (lolling) on the
Tatami (Japanese floor), she has an amazing confidence and for her, is always
Beer/Drink o’clock!, of course she is also a member of the Tomodachi club.
The
worldwide Campers:
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| Me-Mai-Lisa(front)-Diana,Alex-Eric-Luca |
Yin-Chia
from Taiwan, quiet, likes taking pictures but knows how to have some fun J
Amulanga
from Russia (Not exactly Russia, she always explained her roots but I forgot
now, Sorry Amulia!!!)
Martina
from The Netherlands, 18 (2nd youngest), senior student in High
school, she seems very quiet but she is not ;) , does not like Cheese, Coffee,
Caramel, Tofu, and a billion things more, my favorite question to her was “Do
you think he is cute?” and she would always say YES.
Eric, 28
from Cataluña aka SPAIN (lol), spoke with his “Mexican” accent the whole camp
(not really Mexican), always complaining about how Diana and I complained haha,
my Tea-mate and a very nice guy to be with.
Federico
from a small town in Italy, has the most Italian English accent ever and
doesn’t even know it :P, also enjoys drinking and drinking games.
Luca and
Roman, small town in Italy and Ukraine respectively, didn’t get to know them,
both act like kids, didn’t actually cared to spend more time with them… sorry.
Diana, from Mexico, kinda bleh… lol :D Love ya sis!!!
The
Boss: Yuske San
Shiori
San: Lovely lady, always whiling to Eat and Drink, actually, we drank almost
every day with her hehe.
As you
can read, it was quite a good mix the one we had, little by little the idea
of leaving the camp went away and ended
up having a wonderful time.
On our 1st
Welcome Party it was only the Campers, the Boss and Shiori San, I don’t know
how but our fridge was always full of drinks/beer, we bonded through alcohol
(lol) and stories.
The next
day it was Sunday so we had free time half of the day, we went to a Mud
Festival and I got sunburned way too much L I suffered for a week from the pain, but it was there we met Mrs.
Ottomo and her baby daughter, she’s one of the nicest person I met in Hanawa,
after lunch we watched a video of what we had to do, a brief explanation on the
Toros and how we were going to work, there were 2 kind of working teams, 1- The Cooking Team (I was with Federico and
Risa) and the Working Team (I was with Martina and Go), each working time
gathered and we had to decide our design for the Toro, make a sketch and
receive the approval of the design, my team was really quiet but we got our
design, sketch and approv al in 10 minutes (Go team!!), after that we went to
the pool to swim for a bit, take a shower and come back to rest and get ready
for the real welcome party, this was organized by the people from Hanawa, they
cooked lots and lots of Japanese food, brought enough drinks to last a week and
there was a Taiko (Japanese drums/music) performance for us, they were nice
enough to greet each one of us in our language, we ate, met the locals and
drink for a bit, when the party came to an end (around 9—Camp rules, no much
noise after 9 and no lights after 11), everyone started helping cleaning and 20
minutes later almost everyone was gone, but the rest of us decided to drink
some more and continue the party. |
| Mud Fest (Not my kind of event) |
The next
day we would start what would be our schedule for the rest of the camp:
7:30
Breakfast ~ cooked by that day’s Cooking team
8:45
Leave Campstation and go to Workstation
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| Go next to our Toro "Tori Tori" |
Here is
where Eric and I had to go to the City Hall and make cold tea for everyone to
drink while working (this lasted the 2 weeks)
9:00
Start working
10:30
Cooking team had to go start making Lunch
12:00
Lunch (Lunch was usually over at 12:15 and then it was cleaning time)
1:00
Back to work
3:30
Cooking team had to take the bikes to go shower (at the public pool), go to
super market and come back to cook dinner.
4:00
Finish work and take Shower or go swimming
6:00
Dinner
7:30
Activities or Free time
9:00
Drinking –almost everyday- lol
At some
point we had Icecream, people was always very nice to us and would buy us
icecream, at this point I didn’t know our “work” was on the Town’s newspaper
lol… we were the talk of the town.
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| Random pic because I didn't take enough pics lol |
Every
day was pretty much the same, cutting Bamboo (Like Panda bears, only not as fun
or cute), making structure for our over 2meters Toros, pasting paper (with GRUE
aka GLUE, I loved how they said GRUE), paint the paper, put on the lights,
test, check it, put tires at the bottom to make it float on the river,
cleaning, etc, etc, there was always something to do, even if they said “If you
finish earlier you can have free time!!”, that was a LIE and I believed that
lie every single time, I’m not trying to brag or anything, but my team was the
1st to finish, when I learn how to do something I learn quite fast
(except things that require rhythm or coordination), and each time I finished
something before the schedule I was required to do something else, I can still
hear the “Gisela, clean here, pick up the garbage, wash the shows, help with
this, that, skrgnse}ñkngsñkea”, I got tired of that because there was people
who barely helped, after lunch we all had to clean the room where we ate and
the kitchen but there was people who would only bring their plate to the
Kitchen and run ASAP, pft, I wish I was so careless…(not really) but I did think the activities were kind
unfair, yea, you finished earlier, you can have your free time and when
everyone else is done we can re-arrange the work, right?
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| TMI? lol |
After
the 1st week people started to get very comfortable and would take
any free time to sleep, and what happens after a week when there are 8 girls
using the same restrooms?, it’s time to Clean!!! But if the Camp Leader doesn’t
say so, no one does it, it got to a point when I couldn’t even brush my teeth
inside L so, Martina, Diana and I decided to
clean it after we told Mai about it and she simply said “Just open the door”
lol… Oh bebe Mai! And then the Camp Leader wouldn’t even tell us what soap were
we allowed to use to clean it, so fu*k it, we used every product we found, a
hose and cleaned it, of course, after we cleaned everyone was saying “Good,
because it smelled” O_O FML.
Those
little details are what make me not want to do another WorkCamp ever, at some
point it stopped me from enjoying what we were doing, especially when after
just a few days there I had a confrontation with a real a**hole, see, if you
know me, you’ll know I’m nice and barely every get REALLY upset, but this guy
got to do it in less than a week and we got into a point where I had to put a
stop and just let him know I didn’t want to talk to him or even have anything
to do with him, work is work and we can do it together but I didn’t want to see
him more than that, and that’s how I LOST it in hanawa (lol), even my sister
was shocked.
But not
everything was bad, I’m done with my complaining and now we can go to the good
stuff!
I can
honestly say this was a Once in a lifetime experience, I loved it and I love
the people I got to meet, this allowed me to see the real Japan and meet
amazing Japanese people, I didn’t know what we were doing there was so
important but the people from the town were always sending us drinks, snacks,
food or inviting us to do something with them, we were in the newspaper a few
times and people would always say Hi to us on the street, one day we went into
a store just to look around and one of the owners gave us a small stuffed
kitten on a Keychain! <3 .
We took
a Taiko lesson and I knew that was going to be a huge FAIL for me, I was going
to be really embarrassed since my coordination is 0, I have no rhythm and I
basically suck at any music activity, it took me 1 Taiko Professional and 20
minutes later to finally get it (lol), he kept looking at me like “WTF is wrong
with you, just do what I do” haha, but in a nice way, we sweat our asses off,
who knew Taiko was so exhausting? , anyway, Thank you to all the involved in
this class!
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| Us girls rocking the Yukata |
On
another night we got to try on Yukatas (Summer Kimono), it was…HOT, lol, not
Paris Hilton kind of HOT but I can barely breath and I’m sweating kind of Hot,
but it was fun, we all got dressed up and then learned a dance (I of course was
unable to coordinate), we took pictures and just had a great time, thank you to the Yukata
Sensei’s for allowing us to use them, put them on and teach us the dance, it
was really nice meeting you all!.
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| ??? |
There
was also a Karaoke night (OBVIOUSLY!!), at 1st I didn’t want to go
because I can’t sing and I hate when people makes me sing, but when I found out
the a**hole was staying, we decided to go (lol), we had to pay Y1,000 (about 10
USD), got 3 beers, snacks and all the singing you wanted, it took us (Diana-Mai
and I) 3 minutes to get used to it and get crazy at the Karaoke, ended up
singing everything that was playing, clapping, playing the tambourine and the
Maracas haha, I love it when you go somewhere with no expectations and you end
up having the time of your life, by the end up the night (and some drinks) we
all ended up singing “We are the wooooooooorld” and hugging each other and
that’s when Eric got touched in ways he wasn’t expecting hahaha.
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| Kampai-Cheers-Chupito-Salud! |
I guess
for now this is enough, we also did a Home Stay but that calls for its own post
and another one of the Night we finally took the Toros into the liver (river)!
And our Farewell Party!
Time to
enjoy the last hour of my Shinkansen ride from Hiroshima-Tokyo!
-Gisela
V.
P.s. I’m
so excited to be back in Tokyo, is better to have 27°C everyday than the 34-37°
we had in Kyoto an Osaka!!!!
P.s.2. For better Quality pics, you can check my sister's pictures here
P.s.3. I
didn’t say much about making Toros with the children because those Toros were
pre-made, we only had to glue them and finish them aaaaand there were just 6 children, yup 6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! L I was really disappointed at this.
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| They don't look amused |
Work Camp Info online: We will mainly help and join the festival by making four big lanterns ‘TORO’ (2 x 2 meters) and hundreds of small lanterns together with local students.
The Julie/Julia/Gisela Project
Food & Culture
TheJulieJuliaGiselaProject.blogspot.com
  | The Julie Julia Gisela Project |