By Bill Hutchison
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Continuing to reach out to help Japan is important, not just in the short run, “because it’s going to take years to recover from this,” observes Chef Hajime Sato.

For the owner of Mashiko Restaurant in The Junction – who joined in Sunday’s West Seattle for Japan fundraising effort (WSB photo at left) – the recent earthquake in Japan and ensuing tsunami hit too close to home. Hajime grew up in Utsunomiya, an inland city in the Tochigi Prefecture of Japan, not that far from the quake zone. His immediate family is safe here in the USA but he has many extended family and friends near the disaster areas.

Luckily, everyone is okay. The hardest part of dealing with the disaster was trying to communicate with friends and family. “Trying to get hold of someone by phone was frustrating and nearly impossible for the weeks following the disaster”, he said. As it turned out he finally did so by using e-mail and other online methods, such as Facebook.

Asked how he first heard about the March 11th quake, Hajime told a story full of irony. He was vacationing in Hawaii (on the Big Island) and went to his hotel room after dinner. While watching TV, he started seeing the stories about what just happened in Japan. Suddenly, Hawaii was under a tsunami watch. Hajime and his girlfriend struck up a conversation with a hotel employee summoned to his room to fix the internet connection and asked, “Where do you go if there is a tsunami?”

The technician gave him specific instructions and as soon as he finished, the alert sirens went off. Knowing where to go, Hajime and friend hustled to their car (avoiding the chaos in the lobby) and headed for the tsunami-safety zone … they were there from 10 pm until 10 am the next morning!

As far as earthquake-related effects, his business has only suffered some delivery delays for specialty items, but he says, “Considering what’s just happened, it’s not important.”

It has brought back childhood memories for him, though. Japan is renowned for its earthquake-preparedness training, something they do on a regular basis. “I went through drills from first grade on,” he commented. “What’s ironic, though, is that we all thought there would never be anything as severe as what’s just happened. We had simulation trucks that mimicked an earthquake up to an 8 on the Richter scale…we used to laugh and think, ‘no way.’ Now I see how important the training was and should continue to be for everyone living in earthquake-prone areas, or areas that could be affected by the aftermath, such as a coastal city.”

His message to all: learn your tsunami escape routes or post-earthquake “hot-zones”.

As for Sunday’s effort at almost 30 West Seattle restaurants and other businesses to raise money for Japan relief, Mashiko itself raised between $700 and $800 …final tally is forthcoming. Chef Hajime says he plans to host a couple more money-raising events in the next six-plus months to help keep awareness active.
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(PHOTO CREDIT: Sunday night photo by Ellen Cedergreen for WSB)