Page 49 - Fiji Traveller Issue 2

By Samantha Magick

It’s a cool Sunday morning, as Mr Ish-
igawa carefully tends five scallops in their
shells over a small brazier at the Yuriage
Port morning market in northern Japan. The
Sendai City man, his wife Miki and six-year-
old son are visiting the market for the first
time. “It’s really bustling, there are many
people, and I’m so excited,” he says.
Like many visitors, the Ishikawas chose
their seafood from stallholders, before mov-
ing to the small barbeques to cook their
‘catch’. The choices are vast, all kinds of
fish, octopus and squid, skewered meat and
more, but for Miki it wasn’t a difficult deci-
sion. “I love scallops,” she says.
The family is also impressed with the pric-
In the Market Meiniyuki says.
es. “It’s much cheaper here, it’s very cheap,”

Visitors like the Ishigawas are just the
kind of market patrons Hiroyuki Sakurai,
the chairman of the Yuriage Port Morning
for HOPE attract.
Market Cooperative Association, is keen to

Rebuilding from devastation
On March 11, 2011, the Yuriage market
was devastated by the magnitude-9 earth-
quake that hit northern Japan. Across the
region, more than 19,700 people perished.
Sakurai was unable to return to the area for
four days, and he was worried about his sis-
ter, who he had been unable to contact.
They were reunited after a few days at an
evacuation centre. However, at that centre
he met many customers of the market, who
told him they had not eaten for two days and
expected to receive only a piece of bread
the following day.
Sakurai says the market association had
¥20 million (FJ$310K) in its accounts, and
he suggested to his fellow members that
they use that money to provide food to
people in the shelters. The five members he
managed to contact agreed. It was a now
or never situation, he said through an inter-
preter. Of the association’s 47 members,
five died in the tsunami, 15 lost family mem-
bers and ten had lost their homes, factory
or farmlands.
To provide the food, Sakurai went to the
market to buy vegetables. He also negotiat-
ed to secure three two-tonne trucks worth of
expired bread, which otherwise would have
been thrown out.
For two weeks, the association provided
food to tsunami survivors living in emergen-

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