First Work Experience

06.23.2017

The first day of work was tougher than I would expect, mostly because I am not used to standing for hours straight. Both my partner and I stayed for both the morning and afternoon shifts as well as for clean-up duties. We were more than happy to help out, it's just that we would need more time to adjust to the long hours on our feet.

We started the day off with greeting the volunteer members and were immediately handed a knife and a cutting board. I peeled three or four daikons and cut at least 10. From then, we went on to cut cabbages, seaweed, eggplants, green onions, etc. I'm pretty sure me as well as the other volunteers had become experts at cutting and slicing up vegetables. I also think that nothing will ever make me cry as hard as peeling and cutting up about 30 onions.

After cutting up vegetables, we went on to sort and stack about 10+ boxes according to their expiration dates. The sooner the expiration date, the higher that product is on the need-to-use-now list.

While working, it was hard to understand what the workers were saying mainly due to the language barrier. However, we made use of body language as well as the little Japanese that we know or English that they know to complete our tasks.

06.24.2017

For today, my partner and I traveled to the Second Harvest warehouse somewhere in the Saitama prefecture. Here, we helped organized food products that were going to be used for that day. We finished organization at around 3 p.m. and not long after, people started to enter with bags or baskets in hand. Note that all these food products are free and were donated. Second Harvest is an organization that recycles these donated products in hope of helping the poor communities in Japan.

All in all, despite the difficulties on the job, I really enjoyed these experiences.