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ose
and I jumped at the opportunity to join the Lincoln Nebraska Friendship
Force's April 2000 two week exchange to cities of Taketa and Matsuyama.
This would be our third visit to Japan in the last four years but our first
experience with Japan's springtime lovefest with its Cherry Blossom, the
Sakura. Further, we decided to extend our visit two more weeks to
visit old Friendship Force friends in other cities. So, on April fourth,
we joined them in San Francisco to start our flight to Japan . Our
first two weeks in Japan were very different. Different than what we had
experienced before and different from each other. Taketa City
was our first experience with a small Japanese town. Our wonderful
hosts, the Kato family, lived in a small valley with only five or
six neighbors. A small river ran near the house and you could hear the water
during the day and at night. Cherry and plum trees were in blossom.
Rice paddies nearby were being readied for planting. The hillside to the
other side of the river was all wooded with no homes. It was all
very picturesque. And the sakura
were at perfection. We
stayed in "our own" house located steps from the Kato's main house.
This gave us lots of room and privacy. The Katos, Masayoshi
and Sachiko, have three children but only the elder daughter, Miki
, lives at home. Masayoshi works in the Post Office and Sachiko recently
retired and now has "free time," None of the family spoke much English
but it was not a problem. Sachiko was a conspicuously fine cook and
we ate many a meal sitting on an electrically heated carpet wrapped in a
large warm electrically heated comforter-like blanket. Often breakfast
would be a raw egg in steaming rice with cooked vegetables, sesame seeds,
small fish (sakana) and miso soup and fruit. Her other meals were
wonderful too. It was a joy to be called to eat. There
were all kinds of activities. Like others in the group, we visited
the tulip and rape (I know that doesn't sound right but it is a yellow flower)
festivals. The Katos treated us repeatedly to delightful meals
and one wonderful if not expansive seafood dinner the town restaurants.
We attended a "community pot luck meeting" with Sachiko which,
rather than a family like affair, turned out to be more a "mens' sake
party with heavy snacks." Rose tried baking a cake for the going
away party in the community house's previously unused microwave oven.
We also met the Hadanos who live near the Katos. They have a daughter
living only five miles from our Sacramento house. The
end of the week found us very close friends with the Katos. On our
last morning, Sachiko and I painted watercolors of the cherry
blossoms while Rose used miniature dried flowers to decorate paper doilies.
Sachicko then laminated them in plastic to make them rather nifty souvenirs.
But the week was over far far too fast. And with regrets, we said
sayonara to everyone at the bus stop in town. The
bus trip was the start of our next adventure, cruising the Seto Inland Sea
on our way to Matsuyama. Rose has been after me to take her cruising
for years. Hopefully sharing a state room furnished in mattresses
and pillows with twenty others may have sapped her desire for further cruising,
but I doubt it. Anyway, the boat was an experience and fun except for hauling
those suitcases up and down so many stairs. In
Matsuyama, we were met as we disembarked the ship by our radiant and ever
smiling hostess, Chizuko Yamasaki. Her husband, Masato, quickly
joined us with the car and we were on our way to their modern, suburban
home in nearby Tobe Town. One
of the biggest differences from week one was the language. Masato
is a banking executive with Iyo Bank and the Yamasakis had recently lived
in New York for two years. Both our hosts had many questions about
the States, politics, personal interests, investing, etc. Each morning we
were given an abstract from the New York Times, the San Francisco Examiner
or the Sacramento Bee. Occasionally
we would meet the Yamasaki's charming 15 year old daughter, Yoko who
was so busy with school. Also at home were Masato's mother and father
with whom we shared a delightful home dinner. Masato's Dad even introduced
me to a white distilled alcohol the Japanese enjoy called "sho chu."
It is similar to vodka and more potent than sake. Our
lodgings were different too. Our room was on the ground floor in their "Japanese
tatami Room". Meals were served at a western table with chairs.
Most of the house had hard wood floors and the kitchen was modern with a
long aluminum one piece counter top and sink. Meals were excellent
but often had more of a western influence. More bacon and eggs in
the morning. Often herbal or black tea instead of the green "ocha"
tea. And
we were no longer living in the country. The neighborhood consisted
of modern, large homes on a hill side with a view of Tobe Town below. But
it was quiet and in the early morning I sometimes took a walk while Rose
stayed warm in her futon at home. The
Yamasakis took us to see and so many different things. We participated
in an annual water festival
on Saturday. The festival's main event were two special boats which
men tried to capsize in the bay
by rocking them precariously from side to side. Plus a small flotilla
of decorated fishing boats gave spectators free rides to help them
watch the festivities up close. This year no boats were over turned which
was probably just as well as the bay waters were cold and the air wet with
light rain. We
sampled Japanese fast foods from among the many food stalls . We watched
young women in white competing in archery using traditional
Japanese long bows and later other young
ladies dancing a fan dance (I know, that doesn't sound right either
so please look at the picture). The fan dance is unique to this little
town of Hojo City and tiny Kashima Island. This was the same
island that a number of the group picnicked on the following day.
We
did other things. We visited a lacquerware factory, ate cold soba
one day for lunch, shopped at the Tobe Town annual pottery fair, were
given gifts by the Tobe Pottery Museum because we were foreign visitors
and the Yamasakis and the Phelans even attended a Soba
School where we made buckwheat noodles from scratch. Then we ate them
for lunch. And coming back from a day trip to Ichiko, Chizuko treated us
to a winding drive through rugged canyons. We were often flanked by high
walls of rich green pine punctuated by scattered splashes of pink and white
sakura. It was spectacular! We
finished the week by treating the Yamasakis to dinner at a rather upscale
Chinese restaurant in a downtown hotel -one of the few places that took
credit cards. But afterwards, Masato took us to a small, dark, smoky
yakitori restaurant where we sat at the bar, drinking Kirin beer.
We somehow were able to eat again -this time skewered meats and fish barbecued
over a hibachi just a few feet in front of us. Tasty and interesting
-but hard to handle after all the Chinese food. But if I am ever able to
return to Matsuyama, it is where I want to go first. Again
too soon, our two weeks in Japan's two major southern islands were over.
We said good bye with regrets again at the airport not only to the Yamasakis
but also to our new American friends from Lincoln. For, Rose and I
flew that day to Nagoya to join our friend, Toshiko, to start two more weeks
of visiting old friends in Japan. During
that time, we had some wonderful experiences. In Shizuoka, there
was a "reunion party" the first night. We spent two days with Toshiko's
family visiting the seaside, staying at an exclusive hot spa hotel with
communal (not coed) baths, eating wonderful foods including a live baby
abalone (each) which was cooked in its own juices in front of us at the
table. We
bullet trained it to Tokyo to meet friends who had first visited Sacramento
five years ago. We stayed in the home of Etsuko Hirano in a quiet,
very pleasant, almost quaint village like setting right in the heart of
that enormous city. We saw spectacular new buildings along the
water front and downtown. We had a wonderful tempura dinner in the home
of our friends Kinji and Aki. Another
friend took us to a fancy Italian restaurant on the 53 floor of the new
Opera building complex. Great pasta and chocolate desserts to kill
for. Another reunion party lasting two days including sightseeing
by car, visiting 200 year old shogun houses with flowering gardens, and
another hot spa hotel overnight stay with karaoke singing by all.
Next
we headed further north by bullet train to Sendai to visit Keiko and Teruji
Kamada. More busy times. We stayed the first night in the home
of their children, then drove to Naruko, a town smaller than Taketa
to spend another night in a hot spa hotel with baths, a wonderful
meal and shared memories. The next night we stayed in the Kamada's
small, traditional home and visited a famous doll maker friend of theirs.
He made Rose a wooden kokeshi doll while we were there. Our
next two days were a big surprise. With Keiko and her friend Kaoru,
we joined a two day Japanese bus tour to visit sakura festivals in the very
north part of the island. That was quite an experience. Everything
was in Japanese. We attended cherry blossom festivals in Hirosaki and Kakunodato.
We spent another night in a hot spa hotel on Lake Towada which reminded
us a lot of our Lake Tahoe. Our bus went through snow fields where
the snow was deeper than the bus was high. But
all good things come to an end. We returned to Sendai, attended a
large going away party and the next morning caught a plane to Osaka.
After a five hour lay over, we flew home to San Francisco It
had been a wonderful month. The sakura had been perfection in Taketa
City. In Matsuyama, Sendai, Tokyo and Sendai they were past their
prime but still beautiful. But in the north at the sakura festivals,
the blossoms were again spectacular. What a wonderful month it had
been. But we were ready to come home with our memories.
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