Year End Messages

A Thousand Winds

 

Midnight is when today becomes yesterday. Even as May 9, 2008 became May 10, Masami's Mom Hideko let this life of hers give way to her next. The way she lived her active life, she does not, says Masami, sleep anywhere; she is always with us as a thousand winds that blow.

 

  

She must have been a bird circling in flight, says Masami, when Teruaki went to Hideko's hometown Toku Island; to Osaka where they had met, married and spent honeymoon years, to thank his relatives for coming to her funeral; or to Germany, where they had several times after Teru's retirement visited their old friends, to tell them about her in early December.

 

 She shone as soft stars,too, when Masami and her family went to Hawaii and scaled Mauna Kea, and gazed up at the starry skies in summer. When they had Seika's and Yuko's son Shusuke's birthday parties, Hideko was in the room, craving for a morsel of the cake and a cup of tea.

 

 

Teruaki has not built a grave. She did not die; she is still with us, around.

 

 Proud Prince 

 

Midnight is also when tomorrow becomes today. Last year, when our Christmas message 2007 was being written, Seika spent day after day, week after week and month after grueling month bent on preparing for private school entrance exams. What he brought in mind at that time was his tomorrow as a student attending the junior-high division of Ichikawa Gakuen High School, one of the top private high schools in Chiba Prefecture. His efforts paid off. The severe competition notwithstanding, Seika earned his admission.

 

 He made another legend this time again. The night he returned from the Ichikawa entrance exam, he received a phone call from one of the cram school teachers. He said, "I guess I'll pass." Masami felt as if she'd have to reach out to pick up her jaw. How dared he say that, she gasped to herself, even before the results were announced?

 

 

 When March end was drawing near, Masami and Seika were in Osaka, the rakugo Mecca in western Japan. This was in fact a trophy for his successful attempt at Ichikawa entrance and featured several visits to famous rakugo theaters, giving Seika a chance to see Master Sanshi and get his signature on his sensu fan.

 

 

 This deepened his rakugo dedication even more after his Ichikawa admission.

 

Its educational culture that values students' specificities soon turned out to have good chemistry with Seika. Its library has a fairly large rakugo funny story CD collection by legendary masters. Seika frequents there and now, just a bit more than a half year after entrance, has almost engulfed the whole lot. Now he is requesting new title purchases. Seika was offered in early summer a chance to perform rakugo at a school seminars, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, to an audience each of a couple hundred parents wishing to enroll their kids to Ichikawa next year; got his own rakugo slots at its culture festival towards the end of September (his performance proved to be among the DVD titles produced after the festival); and was requested by his friends to perform a funny story or two on the school playground during the Athletic Meet in early October (and he did).   

 

 

 

Now he is one of the school celebrities known even to Principal/President Koga and his wife. When one of the former students, now a professional rakugo story-teller, visited President Koga, Seika was called to the Principal's office and got a sensu fan with his signature on it from him in person.

 

 Masami and Hideaki are growing a bit anxious if this dedication of his will tell on his school work.

 

 Free at Last

Masami is free at last. She gave her all to help Seika prepare for the entrance exam until the end of January, but since April when school year begins in Japan, she became an empty nest. She began her job search and in September landed a new one at Crocs, the newly up and coming shoe-maker company. She had just meant to be a gal-Friday there, but the management never fails to spot an outstanding timber if there is any around. She began as a part-time helper in Quality Control, and come next year, she will replace the current QC manager, deemed inadequate and to be ousted soon, as a full-timer.

 

 

 She cannot stay alive without a daring ambition. Guess what. Her new goal is to accumulate an enough wherewithal for purchasing a post-retirement residence in no other place than Hawaii. She conceived the idea while planning a tour of Hawaii in early spring. After visiting the Big Island in August with Hideaki and Seika, she is nightly viewing Oahu real estate websites. It is easy to imagine that a passion she picked up now is Hula. After the Hawaii trip, she began attending weekly Hula class, making preparations for year-end presentation events in Tokyo. 

Special Year

No year comes and goes without special significance. Each year in its own way, to quote you know who, is unforgettable. For Hideaki, however, this year has had its special significance. It marks the fortieth anniversary of his encounter with English, and he managed to make it not-just-another year in his own ways.

 

Hideaki switched to a new pair of glasses.

 

His workplace has been ailing from problems stemming from teaching plan foul-ups resulting in student misplacement and academic underachievement for a couple years. Even before they surfaced, he had foreseen them and been proposing substitute plans of his own crafting. The problems did surface, but his plans were rejected several times, but finally in June this year, his persistence paid off.  From next school year, at least as far as the school's English lessons are concerned, Hideaki's insights will pave the school's way to normalcy.

 

In October, he had a dozen adults over in his class every Saturday and taught English. The city of Narita asked him to open up the classroom for its citizens and offer some opportunity to re-learn English. The five-week course, featuring Japan's famously difficult entrance exams' reading, listening and grammar materials, was highly appreciated, though a bit difficult for those not currently deeply engaged in English learning. 

 

In November, he went to Sydney, Australia with some 300 students. He went there last year too, but this year's school trip had "school visits" as its special program. The party was divided into three groups and visited three different high schools on the suburbs of Sydney. Hideaki's group visited Sylvania High School in the south of Sydney. With nobody else fitting the task, Hideaki naturally was to deliver a greeting speech. Since this was for cross-culture understanding, he told the Sylvanian kids that "we say in Japan that every event begins with everybody paying respect to each other and ends with everybody paying respect to each other," and invited them to "join us in our Japanese way". Yoroshiku onegai shimasu and arigato gozaimashita were the greeting tips he gave them. Mrs. Elliott, Sylvania High Principal, praised his English and the Aussie students enjoyed his mini-Japanese lesson at the podium. 

 

 

 

 

See more Sydney photos

 The excitements did not end there. He took his students to Blue Mountains and witnessed the grandest view of Three Sisters and did the sights of Sydney City.

 

 

 

Trip to Hawaii, and Oahu

 

 Of all the Hawaiian excitements, the sunset viewed form the Mauna Kea summit undisputedly was the highlight of the family tour. They began scaling the more than 4200-meter-high dormant volcano in late afternoon. They crossed the vast tract of ranch on its foot field, took some lung-acclimatizing rest and ate early bento supper at the Onizuka Visitor Center, commemorating the late Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Onizuka, and gradually entered the lifeless rocky wilderness and approached the top. When they saw the thirteen observatories from seventeen countries, the air was so thin that it was hard to breathe. They put on heavily stuffed bench coats and stepped out into the windy, freezer-like atmosphere. Seika stood for a while watching the ocean of clouds and protruding tips of some of the neighbor islands floating in the Pacific ocean,

 

 
See more Hawaii photos

and then found himself out of breath. He had to stay in the tour wagon, with his lips livid, for the rest of the sunset observation time.

 

Hideaki and Masami, excited, forgot about their sick son and only watched the sun coming down below the horizon. They climbed down some 200 meters later and observed the Milky Way and summer constellations, including Seika's Leo. By that time, he was OK. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 They saw  on Hawaii the smoking Mauna Loa volcano, the Black Sand Beach and sea turtles resting there,

 the volcanic activity remnant Lave Tube, and the active undersea volcano with its humongous columns of smoke. 
When he swam on the hotel's private beach, Seika was stung by a sea urchin. Scared stiff, he screamed he was going to die. Hideaki took him to the front desk and explained, called the security guard and got briefing on how to treat it with vinegar. Seika was astounded how his father could get things done in English.

 

 

 

 (His injury was hardly visible by the next morning.)
Then on Oahu, they climbed Diamond Head, swam on Waikiki Beach to their hearts' content, enjoyed shopping in Alamoana Shopping Center and ate Chinese dinner in its vast food court.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back from Hong Kong

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yuko, Masami's sister, and Shunsuke are back in Makuhari, midway between Tokyo and Narita, now that Masatoshi, Yuko's husband is called back to K-Line head office. Masatoshi works late and comes home, like before, Shunsuke is as soccer-maniac as ever, and Yuko has now joined a nearby athletic gym and muscles up. Her only anguish of heart is, in her words, what to aim for, with Olympiad too high a target at age near forty.

 

 

 

Sick, with Occassional Health

 

 

 

 Hideaki's parents, Yoshifumi and Kiyoko, are weaker than last year. This summer was a crisis season for Yoshi, for he constantly had hyperventilation seizures every now and then. Medical checkups found no physical abnormalities. He recovered in the fall, but now Kiyoko was sick. She became bed-ridden for about two months, suffering from dizziness. Medical checkups found no physical abnormalities again. Towards mid-November, finally, she recovered. It seems Yoshi's indisposition had consumed her stamina, resulting in her dizziness. Now they both can walk, go out shopping and take care of themselves normally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Japan, when something goes without a hitch, people say thanks to even to "by-standers" who offered no help. They say "Okage-sama-de (By dint of you, thank you.)" Hideaki used to feel awkward with this custom. Now, three years past fifty, he has gradually come to appreciate the frame of mind that makes Japanese say thanks even to the non-involved. The year 2008 has seen so many happy and unlucky events, but his families have managed to reach the yearend in peace and in one piece. We would like to thank every one of you reading this message for all that and wish, as every year, you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

Masami, Seika and Hideaki