Clothes donation

Today was a really nice day for me... My friend and her 4 children came to visit us from Shinjo city. She managed to buy some gasoline! She brought A LOT of used clothes! 

She wanted to donate them to the evacuation centers, but they accept only brand-new clothes so she didn't know what to do with them. 

She heard that we had many children from the affected areas in my Ryokan, so she wanted to give her clothes to them. She even brought all of us some sweets! 

Look at this! She brought not only clothes but also scarf, caps, gloves for children which is hard to get in Hijiori. 

At first, I didn't know how people would react. I was afraid that some of them would get offended by it,,, for some reason. 

But on the contrary, all the mothers were super happy to receive her clothes! She had many clothes with cute designs so all the kids were also very excited to try them on. 

Just now, I was folding the clothes people didn't take so that I could give them to people staying in other Ryokan. One young mother from Fukushima helped me. 

She was very happy about all these clothes because she had lost everything with the Tsunami. 

She said "How could people be so kind!"

But the truth is, now in Japan, everybody is so eager to do something for the victims of the earthquake. So I was very relieved and happy that they liked the gift from my friend. 

My friend and her kids went home, content :-) Thank you So much Akiko san!

Tonight, we went to play sports at Hijiori community center. My sister and I invited all the kids and adults staying in my Ryokan, and about 15 of them joined us. The game was so much fun, and everybody was so excited! 

I think it was a good opportunity for them to get to know other people in my community, and also to have some fun!

Another group will leave tomorrow. We are becoming such good friends that I'd hate to see them leave. I'm gonna miss them so much! One of them told me "When things are better, I'll definitely come back to Hijiori!" I also promised her that I would definitely visit her in Soma city to have some crabs! But they told me "Maybe it'll be possible in 10 years time"...

Hopefully the nuclear power plant situation calms down quickly.