Sheltered life

This weekend I got to take a fellow Iwakian to visit the shelter with me, I met her by mentioning JCN in a facebook group for locals to try and grab some new people. So far I’ve nabbed Wesley (the vet tech from 2 weeks ago) and now Kimberly. Oh, the wonders of the internet.

First we got to meet the new puppies that just came in from the 30km area, Kim fully admitted to not being a dog person, but really, no one can deny the cuteness of tiny puppies; even ones that seem to manage to have poop on themselves at all times. The white girl was my favorite, but she seemed to be a bit of a bully to the others. Either way, all of them were quite adorable and surprisingly patient when it came time to clean their fur, these guys seem like they will be very easy to train in the coming weeks.

Later in the day, Takumi took us to see the kittens that are in a local foster home. No matter how many times I work with babies of any species, it still amazes me how fast they grow, just two weeks ago one of these cuties would fit in the palm of my hand, now it takes 2 hands. We also learned some great news from Takumi, not only have all 3 caught up in their weight, but there are now potential adopters for all of them! The foster parents want the orange and gray tabbies, and an international volunteer wants the black one, which is just superb.

so shiny

Upon coming back to the shelter, which has Club Lohas as its bottom floor, we were shocked to see 3 shiny guests, a 1984 Lotus, 1973 Lotus and a 2010 Alfa Romeo! For whatever reason the Japanese men who drove them requested that Kim and I pose with their cars, but I won’t complain since it meant I got to admire the cars for awhile longer. These guys stuck around for a long time, and were pretty entertaining guests.

For dinner, I made chili for everyone, and Maaya joined us. Sweet little Maaya was found in some debris over a year after the disaster, and she had gotten so used to eating trash to survive that she still often prefers human food and plastic over cat food. While finishing dinner, Yuuko, who runs Club Lohas, invited all of us out to karaoke in town. Was a superb way to end the day, just relaxing with everyone (Kim, Howard, Yuuko, Takumi and Aki), also got to learn that Takumi is an incredible singer and that Cobra Starship is available on machines out in the boonies. 

Maaya sleeping

love you too Joni

Susan, who is the founder of Japan Cat Network, is away in Shiga at the moment handling things at the main shelter with her husband, so I slept in her bed and discovered just how starved for attention the cats in that room have been without Susan there. Around 5am Joni and Dylan woke me up by biting and suckling the blanket I was under, and then Joni decided to sit on my face to make sure I was alive. 

Sunday:

After walking the dogs for the morning (Kim’s first time walking a dog by the way!), we took a trip over to Comya, the coffee shop across the street to get some breakfast. Both their baked goods and drinks were divine, and we made the startling discovery that this small town coffee shop was the origin of all things hipster. Seriously, all things. 

also, they have Gremlins on record.

look at that face!

Once the coffee kicked in, Kim and I took Michitaro, who is quite regal until he gets excited, on a nice trip to a local park. A lot of children proclaimed that he was scary, but there were a few brave little ones that came over to give him love, which was also nice because it gave us a chance to tell people about the shelter. It is really a shame how few people in the area know about our existence, so it’s very helpful to take the animals on trips like this to get them some much needed exposure and hopefully get more adopters coming in, because all of them really deserve a forever home, not just a shelter.

Nala <3

 Update on Nala, our FIV+ girl: she is still nearly a skeleton, but she has been gaining weight and is becoming a lot more interested in cuddling. My current fear about her is that I think she may be losing her fur, but that has not seemed to stop her from enjoying being stroked and brushed all day. Nala is just the sweetest thing, and I seriously wish there was a forever home for her so that she could get the full devotion she deserves.

Dylan loving life

Ah, I nearly forgot! The catillion that Caroline had started for the cats 2 weeks ago has now been finished and everyone just adores the chance to get fresh air. There is no way I can properly thank Caroline for dreaming up and creating this great spot, it’s fantastic. 

I will close this entry out with with one more photo of some of the guys waiting for dinner 

The Trek From Hell

Moments after leaving the Narita airport to begin our trek to our works office to get directions to the training site, it dawned on both of us that someone (me) had packed way too much and that this was going to be a very tiresome journey. Thankfully though, the start of our trip was a 90min bus ride to Omiya, followed by some very nice HS students helping us find the correct route to Borderlink, while giggling every time I told Debu to shut up about how I packed to much, so that was not too horrible. On top of that, Debu, being the amazing boyfriend that he is, carried my biggest bag for me.
Anyways, after a grueling trek to the office, we came to discover that that grid of Omiya was in the middle of a black out,* so I got to watch the luggage downstairs while Debu trekked up the pitch black stairwell in search of directions... it wasn't so bad waiting though, because during that time I got to see a bunch of Japanese office workers making ghost sounds and waving their flashlights around, which was quite adorable. Also during my time as luggage watcher, another man with a giant backpack came up and asked if I was there for Boderlink, and it turned out this random man was a fellow ALT who had actually been here when the quake happened and had decided to stay to continue his contract as a teacher, which I highly commend him for, since so many fled. He told me about how it was one of the scariest moments in his life, and how even though he was far away in Tokyo, it was still strong enough to give him horrible motion sickness, but the worst he said was the constant aftershocks that occurred.... the ground seemed to never stop shaking. Since he was also heading to the training facility, the three of us decided to travel together, and thank God for that too, because he helped carry my immense amount of luggage, and I am pretty sure that if it had just been the two of us, we would have never made it.

And so the trek from Hell truly began... for starters, we found out that to get to the training facility, we would have to travel back to the station that we had originally arrived at (oh joy), and then make two separate train transfers. This journey was made into an even larger issue due to the power conservations, which meant all elevators and escalators were turned off, and Japanese train stations have many, many, stairs in them, oh and by the way, two of our suitcases weighed about 70lbs each. Yea, this was going to be good. Thankfully, there were quite a few people who went far out of their way to help us get to our destination, including an engineer who was learning English to go to Europe and get women, and a 60yr old man who randomly grabbed my 70lb suitcase and just lugged it up a flight of stairs for me, but even with these advantages, it was still incredibly tough going, and it took multiple hours to make our way from Omiya to Kazo for training. By the time the three of reached our end destination, we were exhausted, sweaty and about ready to collapse. Needless to say, I bought the guys dinner as a thank you, and we celebrated the end of our long day at a local Okonomiyaki** place and a few cold beers.


*A lot of areas in Japan have been doing scheduled rolling black outs to try and conserve as much energy as possible after the disasters so that it can instead go to more necessary things then elevators and flashy billboards

**an Okonomiyaki is basically a Japanese pancake with anything you want mixed into it, for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki