When you're on site working with Schop-Dan, no one will tell you what to do next. The team leader, Ryo Taira, may well shout "Let's do it!" to pump everyone up at the start but that's about it.

You arrive at the site, pull on your gear and get down to work.

The sites the group visits are also never the same. Not just houses, it also works at cemeteries, fields, and more. The volunteers need to be flexible to tackle the varying circumstances at each different location.

Understandably, teamwork plays a big role. When someone needs help they just call out. You'll run for the wheelbarrow when you see the rubble starting to pile up. Everyone puts their backs into it but there is a break every hour or so.

It's actually easy to get carried away shoveling up dirt. Suddenly someone pats you on the shoulder: "Come on, let's take a break." No instructions are given during this break. Instead, you just see everyone resting, smiling, asking one another if they can handle the heat or offering drinks around.

Everyone shovels at their own discretion and their own pace, scooping the mud, picking up what seems to be valuable. Of course, you can always ask someone around you when you aren't so sure what to do.

Schop-Dan respects the volunteers’ own judgment. Work that feels at first just like hard labor soon evolves into something that the person wants to do of their own accord. We become completely self-motivated and this affects the effort we put into scooping up the mountains of mud.

Schop-Dan also doesn't just work inside the house. For example, if the gutter around the house remains clogged with mud, the rain will not drain and flood the house. The gutter around this house was packed solid with mud and weeds were growing on top. The volunteers shoveled up mud from inside and around the house, disposing of it out in the street.

Nishida and Sato from Hobonichi, novice shovelers working under the scorching sun, said the first thirty minutes were the worst and they thought they'd never make it through the day. But they persisted, being careful to take breaks between shovelfuls.

A vase, bags, a purse, socks. All manner of things that drifted into the gutter were dug out and reclaimed by the team.

Anyone without a task to do would go out to the lawn, cut and pull up weeds, before working to remove the ubiquitous mud. The mud brought by the tsunami has a different texture to the existing soil. Thick deposits of mud need to be shoveled and scraped off before the original ground can be seen again.

The family's bowls and plates, though stored in a cupboard, were also covered with mud. We washed them clean, returning a semblance of normality.

Schop-Dan volunteers are not just using shovels. They are also armed with scrubbing brushes, rakes, dustpans, high-pressure washers, and other tools. They switch arsenal to cope with the varying situations the post-tsunami destruction throws up.

Once you get familiar with the duties, you find there's always a place for someone even without much in the way of brawn or stamina.

Garden trees covered with mud will eventually recover their strength and stretch out their green leaves after being washed. As a finishing touch, EM (Effective Microorganisms) water is sprayed inside and around the house. Mission complete for Schop-Dan.

Sometimes the owner of the house would come out to say a few words. Today it went like this: "Up till now, I hadn't touched this house because I was just going to take it down. However I changed my mind today after I saw the work you had all done. Thank you so much for coming a long way and working under such heat. Take care on the way home."

Everyone knows that the house still wasn't ready for the owner's family to live in yet. But what's important is to give them first them the courage to move on, even just half a step forward. Small but effective steps: That's what Schop-Dan believes in.

Swiftly loading the gear back into the truck, Schop-Dan moves on to the next site.

(To be continued...)