Rice Sticks and Tea Asian Food Pantry

I recently learned through the New England JACL newsletter that Boston has a food pantry for Asians! While I'd imagine they probably aren't serving Japanese families, I wanted to publicize their work. 

The Rice Sticks and Tea Asian Food Pantry has been around for 14 years, "serving over 120 pre-screened low-income Asian immigrant and refugee families each month. Those 120 households represent over 300 children, adults and seniors. It is the only food pantry program in the region whose mission is to serve the Asian community and provide food that is consistent with their cultural cooking traditions and preferences. The program began as a collaboration between the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry and the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence. RST was created in response to legislation that denied food stamps to all immigrants regardless of their circumstances. Battered immigrant women and children as well as the elderly are among the most affected."

Monetary donations can be made online or by mail. You can also volunteer on the second Friday and Saturday of every month when they pack and distribute the food.

It's Not Just Mud

I just stumbled across an interesting volunteer organization in Ishinomaki via a lip dub some of their members made. In spite of the silliness of the lip dub, It's Not Just Mud (INJM) is doing serious rebuilding work in the Tohoku region.

INJM was founded last year by Jamie El-Banna, a British former English teacher who had been working in Osaka. He told the BBC that prior to 3/11/11 he "had never done any volunteer work in [his] life." He didn't start out with the intention of forming a non-profit but things snowballed and they received official status as a non-profit this year.

I love that they have a F.U.E. (Frequently Used Excuses) list on their website that addresses the excuses people make for why they can't volunteer. I told myself for years that I was going to start volunteering when I had the time, but other than a few random bits of volunteering here and there, I didn't commit to long-term volunteering until I joined Tewassa this year. When I think of all the hours of my life I've wasted doing meaningless things, I'm sorry that I didn't start volunteering sooner! Check out their video in which volunteers answer the question, "Why did you volunteer?"

I enjoy working with Tewassa but feel that I'm still fairly disconnected from really understanding what people in the Tohoku area are going through.  This also seems to be common for Japanese in Japan who live outside Tohoku. Some of our members have delivered our quilts to schools in the area so they've been able to see things first-hand and talk to people directly affected, but for those of us who haven't gone on one of these deliveries yet, I don't think we can really grasp what they've been through and what the challenges are from the pictures and reports of other members.

I haven't been to Japan in nearly 25 years and I have to admit that my memories of my visits are dim and I have no recollection of living there (we moved to the US when I was two and a half). In spite of the fact that my memories of Japan are so fragmented and mostly exist in photographs, I was deeply saddened by the images of Japan in the aftermath of 3/11/11. I looked around for volunteer opportunities, but at the time, it was difficult to find English-language organizations looking for unskilled volunteers and it seemed the consensus was that it wasn't helpful for non-Japanese speaking volunteers without specialized skills (like search & rescue) to go because you'd be more of a burden than a help.

Things seem to have changed now that Japan is out of the initial crisis phase. I really like that INJM encourages people to volunteer with them regardless of their Japanese or English language abilities. They appear to do a good job providing information in both languages. I have my own special F.U.E. (multiple food allergies) for why it would be a bad idea for me to go to Japan, but perhaps I'll look volunteering with them at some point.

Ways to Help Japan

This post is a work in progress. Am I missing something? Let me know at keiko dot in dot boston [at] gmail dot com!

Last updated: September 2013

Not being plugged into Boston's Japanese-American community (do we even have one?), I struggled to find ways to support Japan after 3.11. Almost every project I've found has been discovered through a random Internet search. I thought I'd collect them here.

Arts

Nozomi Project - Nozomi means "hope". Women in the Ishinomaki area take broken pottery left in the wake of the tsunami and make beautiful pieces of jewelry. The Nozomi Project provides these women with income and community.

SHIZU革 - Women in Minamisōma, Fukushima make leather bracelets and keychains. Unfortunately their website is only in Japanese, but they will ship anywhere in the world and their director speaks some English.

Tewassa - decorative quilts and other projects

Books

Peko Peko: A Charity Cookbook for Japan
Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction - includes a contribution from local Japanese American artist Tak Toyoshima

Clothing

Aloha for Japan t-shirts & caps

Direct Aid

Perhaps giving money or buying something just doesn't feel like enough. These organizations will deliver your donations directly to people in need.

Knit for Japan - hand-knitted/crocheted items and/or yarn/tools
Socks for Japan - socks & care letters
Update 3/28/13: Socks for Japan doesn't appear to be operating anymore. They haven't updated their website in a long time and I've sent several emails that have gone unanswered.

Hands-On

It's Not Just Mud - Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture-based "non-profit volunteer organization specializing in disaster relief, grass-root support and rehabilitation of disaster affected individuals and small businesses." Japanese fluency isn't necessary to volunteer with them. 

Tewassa - Handmade with love in Boston

10/24/15: Hello! If you've found this post after reading about it in a book, please note that this was written in 2012 and is no longer current with the group's activities and needs. Please don't send any quilt squares to Tewassa! Check out Tewassa's blog (this mainly cover's Boston's activities) or connect with one of the group's chapters – Boston, Massachusetts, Orlando, Florida and Japan – on Facebook for more information. Thanks!

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My involvement with Tewassa was a happy accident. I first came across this volunteer organization at Boston's Haru Matsuri 2012 (Spring Festival) in April. Unfortunately, the festival was so crowded I couldn't bear to stay, so I snapped a picture, took a brochure, and told myself I'd look it up later.

Tewassa quilt at Boston Haru Matsuri 2012.

Weeks passed and I forgot to look it up. I even found the brochure amongst my stuff and recycled it without checking out their website. I'd purchased a fish-shaped rice paddle from the GrayMist booth and later, I found that they'd put a GrayMist brochure in my bag. I was surprised to discover that the studio is near my place and I've driven past it dozens of times. I decided I should stop in and check out the shop.

On my first visit, I bought a fish-shaped sponge for washing dishes. I noticed information about Tewassa, but didn't inquire. A few days later, a friend told me how much she loves the fish sponges (she brings them back when she goes home to Japan) so I went back to get another. It was a Saturday afternoon and they were working on adding hand-stitched embellishments to the quilt pictured above. They invited me to come back the following Saturday, but I had plans, so I stayed that day.

I was born in Japan, but moved to the U.S. as a toddler. Although I haven't been back to Japan in 26 years (when I was 10) and have only vague memories, I still feel a deep connection with my birth country. I was so sad for Japan after the Tohoku earthquake & tsunami and the subsequent nuclear disaster at Fukushima, but I had no idea what I could do. I didn't have any Japanese friends at the time and didn't know how to find local organizations that were helping. Google led me to a concert series. I made it to 2 out of 3, but since I'm self-conscious about the fact that I can't really carry on a conversation in Japanese, I didn't talk to anyone.

Tewassa, which means "handmade" in the Fukushima dialect, produces and delivers quilts to Japanese communities in the disaster-hit areas.  Since I joined Tewassa, the group has screened Fukushima 2011: Chronicles from the Heartland at MIT. Ours was only the second screening of this documentary in the U.S. We were joined by director Hidetaka Inazuka and the producer who did a Q&A in Japanese & English.  The film was quite grim and brought home the fact that there's still much more work to be done. People forget about disaster areas as time passes. Tewassa aims to keep people in the Boston area from forgetting about the people who still need help and support in Japan.

We recently completed the quilt pictured above and sent it off to Toyoma Elementary School in Iwaki with one of our members. There was a big send-off party at GrayMist complete with delicious yakitori and yaki onigiri compliments of Yakitori Zai!

We're currently working on several projects:

* We started cutting fabric for a Christmas tree quilt to which we'll attach hand-made ornaments.
* We'll be helping Brookline High School students who are working on a quilt that will be delivered to a Japanese high school in Minamisōma next spring.
* We're collecting squares for a quilt that we'll begin work on next spring which will be delivered to a school in Iwate, probably next fall.  We need 144 squares to make a quilt and at last count, we had around 60.

We also have a Tewassa group in Orlando, FL (Facebook) that is working on their own projects.

Our next public appearance will be at the Black Ships Festival in Newport, RI on July 21 and 22.

If you'd like to participate, please stop by GrayMist Studio & Shop in Huron Village in Cambridge, MA Saturdays between 4PM and 6PM. No experience is necessary - just a willingness to learn.
Many people who have never picked up a needle or operated a sewing machine before have worked on our quilts.  Children have helped with the sewing.  Even Boston's Consul General of Japan, Takeshi Hikihara, picked up a needle.

Meetings are generally conducted in Japanese which can be challenging for me since I can barely understand. Usually someone translates for me, but if not, I just soak in the Japanese and hope that something will rattle loose in my brain. We've had a few non-Japanese speakers join us on Saturday afternoons. Everyone in Tewassa can speak some English, so if you don't speak Japanese, that's okay!

If you're busy and just want to decorate a square for our next big quilt, you can stop by the shop any time and ask to decorate a square. If you happen to have fabric at home and want to use your own, squares should be 6" by 6" which includes a 1/2 inch seam allowance.  The decoration area is 5" by 5".  Monetary donations are always welcome, although we don't currently have non-profit status. We can also use quilting supplies if you're looking to destash & declutter the following supplies would be welcome:

* fabric
* marking pencils
* pins
* hand sewing needles
* thread: sewing, quilting, & embroidery
* beads
* fabric pens & paint

You can also help by spreading the word. If you run a business and have an area where you could put some of our brochures, please contact me at keiko dot in dot boston [at] gmail dot com. Domo arigato gozaimasu!