One frosty morning in Kamibun a collection of villagers gather around huge vats of boiling water to warm their hands in the steam.  A spread of uniformly uniformed men fiddle with fire extinguishers and K-Trucks; they are the guys between us, a fire and some terrible tempura incident.  They are the Kamibun volunteer fire corps.

Following a brief introduction/explaination I gather that we are here to practice disaster protocol.  With the disaster up north still fresh in our minds, practices like this are not just another social occasion – they are totally necessary for the safety of everyone in the village.

The volunteer fire corps set up some boxes and fire extinguishers and I have a flashback to a sports festival in the mountains.  Is this a race?!  Naaa, but it’s just as much fun since we get to pump and squirt a fire extinguisher at a target.

Once the cylinders are empty there is a sudden rush to the tables at the back.  I’ve never seen old Japanese people move so quickly – there must be free food.  Yeeaah, it’s dried rice.

Sadly, we fill up the little plastic red-cross bags with rice and water and then these get lobbed into the huge vats of boiling water where sachets of boil-in-the-bag curry are already floating happily.  We had more work to do before the curry and rice, and that involved a drawn out lecture on disasters and the Red Cross.  It was utterly freezing in the gymnasium in the empty school but it would be immoral to complain while watching a slideshow of the tsunami destruction in Tohoku.

After the presentation our curry and rice appear.  A scrum quickly formed around the food.  It’s pretty obvious but when you have to survive, you do what you got to do.  Everyone here knows that!

Eating the curry, it was difficult to put it all into perspective.