After the 2011 Tohoku earth quake and tsunami, a video called “What we are thinking of now( Watashi tachi ga ima, omoukoto)” is being delivered on the internet; the concept of this video is based on the collection of supportive messages from outside of Japan.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCaNK8PUbUU[/youtube]

This video was planned and is being managed by a group called “Shinshin Jinrui” that mainly consists of Japanese young people. We got to speak with the leader Mineka Yamamoto who took this earth quake as an opportunity to plan this special project by collecting supportive messages from all over the world.

Concept
I make videos of “What young people are thinking about right now” and open them on youtube. The concept is to pass on to everybody the “real live voices”; therefore, most of the time we never do editing.

The very first video I made was based on the theme of what the young generation in Tokyo are thinking about and doing now. Within creating this, I started to wonder what the young generations from other countries think about Japan. At this point, I had friends who were studying abroad send me messages of people from all over the world. And those messages are edited, and created into a video.

Why did you think of doing such a project?

It is said that it will take long years and months for Japan to recover. However, young people in Japan and in the world, lose interest as time goes by. I believe that this will make Japan’s recovery difficult. Therefore, to fix this problem, I wondered what I could do to help, and decided to make this video. I was originally in this “Shinshin Jinrui” group that makes videos and uploads them on the internet, so I decided to upload my video there.

For this plan, I first collected the “What I think right now” from the young people in Tokyo. This is because it was right after the earthquake, when the concerns were still high; I wanted to leave that in a video so they can look back at it and to remember how concerned they were. Also I felt that as I was taking the videos, “to listen to people” those who are talking realize new things and with just that it is possible to raise concerns.

For future developments
Also, in creating this video, I realized I wanted to know what young people from all over the world were thinking! This started after the earthquake, all of the comforting messages from all over the world in Twitter. After reading all of their messages I thought “I have to stop just watching TV, and do something about this”. Therefore, I hope that a lot of people can feel the same way I did from seeing the messages from all over the world. The videos consist of my friends studying abroad taking them, and I collected them. For those that cannot see through Twitter, I believe that through a video a closer more intimate meaning can be felt by one another.