Ohayo gozaimasu from Suwa

Checking in from Suwa

For the last leg of our journey we are spending the weekend in Suwa with our old friend Tomo-san. For those of you who don't know, when Marty and Dawna came to Suwa in 1984 to visit Oguchi-sensei following their 21 day tour of the orient, they met a young man by the name of Tomomatsu Misawa. He was only 17 or 18 at the time, and his father desperately wanted him to go to Canada to learn English. My mom and dad agreed to board him at their place, as they had a few empty bedrooms (I wasn't born yet) and in exchange, he would help train/teach Toronto Suwa Daiko. He stayed for 1 year and did grade 12 at Thompson CI, then came back in '85 for grade 13 (he lived with Al Sora at that time since my mom was pregnant with me by then). We met up with him on March 11th in Tokyo last year, and he was so reassuring in trying to make sure we felt safe and secure despite the constant aftershocks that we could feel all night long. We spent Saturday with him, but on Sunday he had to return to Suwa to load up a van full of supplies and drive it 7 hours to Sendai to help some of his coworkers. He said he made that trip multiple times, each time with more supplies like water and gasoline, both of which were in short supply. 

Fast forward to this year, we met him in Suwa this time since he lives in Ina City, just outside of Suwa. We are in Nagano prefecture, a few hours south of where the Nagano Olympics were held in '98. His company is having their big 50th anniversary celebration party tonight here at the hotel, which I believe was supposed to be held on March 12th last year but was cancelled for obvious reasons. We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant downstairs, he picked out some dishes ahead of time for us to try - oishii! From there we could hear him playing taiko for the party. He said it has been a long time since he stopped playing but has started drumming again in the last few years teaching his coworkers. 

Everyone here is very friendly, not that everyone else hasn't been friendly, but we are now traveling on our own without any of our wonderful companions (translators!). The server at dinner was this tiny little thing, she apologized profusely that she didn't speak English but she was actually pretty good. She told us she has a friend in Victoria, so she visited them last year (kimashita?) for 5 days, starting in Victoria then going to Vancouver and Banff as well. We asked if her friend was Nihonjin, married to hakujin? Her eyes got very big and I'm not sure if she was impressed that I guessed correctly or that I used a bit of Japanese well enough for her to understand. Maybe both. If she was embarrassed that she didn't speak English, we were even more embarrassed that we are full Japanese but can barely put a sentence together. 

Speaking of which, Hiroko was telling us that people often asked what our relation was in our travels, and she just told them we were her son and granddaughter. So then they asked why she didn't teach us Japanese and without thinking she just told them "because they didn't want to learn!" she said the horrified and confused looks on their faces were priceless, as she realized after the fact that they didn't know we were Canadian, and not actually related to her. 

It is an interesting concept though, that most Nikkei families don't pass down the language through generations because of the oppression during the war years. I know in my own family, my grandparents we worried that by teaching their kids Japanese, it would hinder their ability to learn English, so they gave them all Canadian names and spoke only Japanese to each other, and not to their kids. I'm sure this was the same for a lot of the other Nisei and Sansei, which doesn't give us Yonsei much hope for preserving the language either. I am fortunate to be able to take conversational Japanese classes at the JCCC, but the vast majority of my peers may never learn to speak it, so they will miss out on such a huge part of their cultural heritage. I will make a point to make sure my own kids learn at least basic language skills, even if they never need it, I now regret not taking Japanese language school as a child (mom and dad gave me a choice - go to school on a Saturday at 9am to learn Japanese, or keep our Saturday horseback riding lessons. What would you have picked at age 12?). 

Tomo has a full day planned for us tomorrow, he was sooo excited to see us today, even though we only saw him for 10 minutes. We won't get to meet his wife on this trip because her mother is sick but his mom and niece will be spending the day with us. My head is still spinning from our long train ride here, my search for gingerale is still ongoing but I did discover that the CC Lemon Refresh drink is a little bit like a sparkling lemonade, so that helps a bit. I will really miss their amazing assortment of drinks from the vending machines, I got a hot chocolate at the train station - in a can! Imagine that! Not too hot, drinking temperature, and so tasty. North America is really missing out on this vending machine business. Back home I could get coke, diet coke, gingerale, sprite, maybe nestea, and fruitopia. Oh and bottled water. That's about it. What a rip off lol. 

Dad's been giving me grief on all the stuff I keep buying. And it really is just STUFF, little trinkets, food (lots of foodstuffs like matcha latte powder, matcha cookies and cream chocolate bars, candies, keychains, cookies, stickers... Omg everything is just so darn cute! Or tasty looking. Or just too cool to not bring home to show my friends). We will probably need to buy another suitcase. But I'm ok with that too, even their suitcases here are amazing. I bought a Delsey in Hawaii, designed and manufactured in the USA and the quality is just embarrassingly poor, the handle is flimsy, the elastics are already getting stretched out with 1 month of use, the wheels are plastic... The one I bought in Kyoto last year is phenomenal. Just such a sturdy, well made, beautifully designed piece of luggage. 

Oh! Luggage! That reminds me. Japanese people are so smart - they usually ship their luggage from place to place, to avoid having to struggle with it on the train, usually arranged through the hotel. We shipped one of our suitcases from Kyoto to Tokyo and it cost us maybe $17 Canadian? For an *entire suitcase*. I don't even want to know how much it would cost to do that back home. Not only that but I doubt the hotel would agree to store it for you for a week until you arrive to retrieve it. Ours will be waiting for is at our hotel in Tokyo on Monday. Amazing. 

Dad is sound asleep on the bed beside me, "just resting his eyes" he says (he's still in his jeans and dress shirt). I've got a sumo match on to try to drown out his snoring but I think I'll just go to sleep instead. Then he can deal with MY snoring instead. 

By the time you read this it will probably be Saturday evening (Sunday morning our time) so wishing you a nice remainder of your weekend and I probably won't check in again until we're back in Toronto on Tuesday. Thank you for following, I have a few unfinished posts that I still have to publish, most notably the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki one, so when I am able to integrate photos I'll put those up as well. 

Lots of love,
   Kris xo