IN TOUCH WITH ANOTHER
SOURCE STREAM IN LIFE?
YOKAI “Angels”, serendipities, coincidences; however one might describe the situations, are a constant part of my life. And maybe my late husband, Sam, is now one of those angels???
Yokai are these supernatural entities that are part of folklore in Japan. Mothers often use them to discipline their children. I am learning more about how I might promote them as part of my legacy for a more fulfilling life. In Japanese literature they are also the creators of mischief and the misfortunes in our life that we have to correct and from which we learn.
As the Portland trip unfolded, I didn’t send up prayers. I just dealt with whatever happened in the best way possible. It all started with being stopped by the police near Castle Rock on I-5 for speeding, but he didn’t give me a ticket. My guess is that we were all speeding, but I was a non-threat gray haired grandma who would be a good example for the other drivers speeding by.
Arriving at Portland’s Japanese Garden, it was so popular there was absolutely no parking. It first took a half hour of circling with no results. I finally decided to stop in the middle of one potential spot and wait with a couple cars behind me forming a line of waiting. Sure enough, within five minutes the car in front of where I was waiting pulled out and I was the one in position to take advantage.
By phone, Calvin Tanabe, my high school classmate, agreed to meet me at 12:30p at the MAYHO and CALVIN TANABE ticket gate. When it was time, I noticed my phone charge read “red”. The car charger had not worked as I had used the GPS for the three hours, all the way from Mercer Island for directions. I decided, I better not take the phone with me as Cal, a board member of the 12 acre garden, took me on a private tour.
Four hours later, ready to leave for Tualatin and Cousin Don’s house to stay the weekend, I tried to turn on my phone again. Now, it had gotten so hot in the car, it wouldn’t turn on until I had cooled the car down with the AC. When Maps showed again, it indicated it would take me 43 minutes to get to Tualatin and it was now rush hour. Therefore, I decided I better call them and write down their phone number and address in my notebook as I would likely have to stop at a gas station or business to get further directions because my phone charge was reading RED.
Forty five minutes later, I turned into their cul-de-sac, parked in front of their driveway and the phone blacked out!! I have no specific description for the Angels in my life, but I do believe there is a dimension beyond the reality of my five senses with Angel activity.
![EVERY CHILD CAN BE EDUCATED]()
EVERY CHILD CAN BE EDUCATED
Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, the originators of the SUZUKI METHOD of learning has a favorite number. This number, 10,000, is the number of repetitions it takes for one to become a professional of a skill. Anyone who is Japanese and in the arts understand, through hundreds of years of traditional history, the idea of the ten years it takes for any student to become the first level of “Master” in their practice.
Malcom Gladwell, in his book OUTLIERS, suggests that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs repeated the skills they loved enough to put in 10,000 hours related to computers.
Twenty hours a week of practice is one thousand hours a year. That is why Dr. Suzuki started children at the age of 3 to start practicing the violin as he developed his method of education. He said, “That way, children can get in the ten years before they get busy with high school studies.”
A three-year-old does not start with three hours of playing the instrument every day. It is just as important to develop an attitude of accomplishment - listening to the music recordings for where one is aiming; parents have to organize their lives to include even 15 minutes a day of practice and going to lessons.
In 1967 Mihoko Yamaguchi came from Matsumoto, Japan, to help Sister Annella develop Seattle’s first Suzuki School of Music at Holy Names Academy.
![Touring Portland Japanese Gar...]()
Touring Portland Japanese Garden
Last weekend, I met my high school classmate at the Portland Japanese Garden where I was treated to a private tour because he is on the board of the 12 acre garden. The esthetics live up to the claim they have created one of the most authentic Japanese Gardens in the world outside of Japan.
Proof of the garden’s popularity is that I drove around for half an hour before there was even one parking spot to be found. It seems that a large percentage of the visitors are from out of town.
Calvin Tanabe and I met at the ticketing enclosure and gate. What I found stirring is Calvin’s commitment for the sharing of our Japanese Heritage Values for the benefit of our larger American community. We entered the “Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gate”. The “Tanabe Gallery” adjacent to the gift shop provides the community with the year-round opportunity to deepen the visitors understanding of the art and culture of Japan.
We spent four hours sharing stories and reminiscing the path taken to this point in his life. I am humbled to know Calvin who, grew up and graduated with the 117 of us at OHS ’56 from the Eastern Oregon town of Ontario.
After medical school and training as a neurosurgeon he served in Viet Nam. His comments were that he kept himself totally consumed with work, as one of Portland’s top neurosurgeons, until his retirement and is currently enjoying his garden and fresh vegetables.
“Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Address” is a program established in 2014 with Oregon Health & Science and Portland State School of Public Health to offer differing perspectives on important topics related to public health. Each year a speaker is selected to bring diverse ideas to the community and encourage a free exchange of ideas.
The following day I toured the Japanese American Museum of Oregon on Flander Street. We toured the exhibit in the “Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery”.
What a privilege to know individuals like Cal and Mayho!
![Yuki Inagaki, Yuka Shimizu, Co...]()
Yuki Inagaki, Yuka Shimizu, Consul General Inagaki, Hiro Tojo
Dee Goto, Michi Hirata North
The newest Consulate General from Japan to Seattle is Hisao Inagaki. Three of us, Michi Hirata North, Concert Pianist and PianoTeacher; Yuka Shimizu, creator of the Bellevue Children’s Academy, and I were special guests to meet Consul Inagaki and his wife Yuki, arranged by Hiro Tojo.
Michi Hirata North and I are best friends because the Suzuki “Talent Education” for violin, cello and piano was first developed in Michi’s home in Tokyo. I helped start the Seattle Suzuki School at Holy Names Academy where I helped interpret when the first teacher from Japan, Mihoko Yamaguchi Hirata, came to develop the program started by Sister Annella.
Because of Covid-isolation there had been no large welcome events as usual for the new Consul General. We arrived at 6:30 pm and didn’t leave until after 11pm because we had such a good time talking and telling stories around the seven course dinner created by Chef Kenichiro Tsushima.
The story of this experience will certainly be retold for several years to come. There is nothing I enjoy more than person to person, in depth, discussions and sharing the stories of what brings each of us to our “present” circumstances.
![See all the fruit bulbs from wh...]()
See all the fruit bulbs from
which the flowers originally hung?
Where am I putting my energy toward a fulfilling life? I just spent the last hour redirecting the energy of the fuchsia plants hanging across the front of our house. What we want are thriving branches with flowers to show off beauty and inspire us.
Watering daily is a given, but in the month or two that we’ve had the plants, I’ve not paid attention to the beauty for the rest of this year’s growing. The first thing I do is to pull off the dead flowers and bulbs that become fruit if I want the energy to be redirected to new flower buds.
Similarly, in my life, I am thinking of where my energy is directed beyond the “watering” or daily essentials. I need to cut off putting energy into what I no longer want?
My goal is to develop inspiring Japanese Heritage related stories that are flowers, of a legacy of values for a better world, that carries on to the next generations.
![GOING TO SCHOOL ON A BUS]()
Our granddaughter started attending school “in person” this week after a year of Covid-Isolation virtual schooling. Our daughter is telling everyone how fortunate it is, the bus stop is at the bottom of our driveway. Our granddaughter is excited because part of the social experiences of school are the gatherings at the bus stop and the rides to school.
I googled for images of the early school busses and there are no pictures of anything similar to my experience seventy-five years ago when I started school in the farming community of Sand Hollow, Idaho.
School was eight miles southwest along the graveled roads to Notus, Idaho. I was at the end of the bus route. My playmates along Sand Hollow Road north, Patsy and Jerry Stewart, went to the New Plymouth, Idaho, school. The bus was a blue box on the back of a flatbed truck. We sat on the benches around the edges. History says that was the seating arrangements of the first busses.
I have a scar where my left knee got hooked on a nail as the bus came to a stop and I hurriedly stood to get off at my stop. It was no big deal. Mom put on a little mercurochrome. I don’t even remember a band aid.
Each school morning, the bus driver picked up Virginia Butcher first. She got to sit with him in the front cab. The Butchers lived closer to school, where the driver started each morning, than he drove to start his route at our house. Virginia was still in high school, but that’s the first love story I watched in real life because they also went to the Baptist Church in Notus and I think I remember when they got married.
One day in second grade, I missed the bus home. The Notus School had all twelve grades in the same building. Elementary kids got out earlier than the upper grades. Dickie Randall and I went out to the field behind the school where he decided to dig for some worms and we forgot the time. Dickie and I started walking home. About a mile later, one of the sons of a neighboring farmer, from over the hill from Dickie’s farm, came by and offered us a ride home. Mom had cautioned me to never ride with strangers. I didn’t know them. I refused to get in the car. Dickie got in. They drove slowly as I continued to walk. I walked and they drove about another mile when Dad came looking for me. I wasn’t scared, I just followed rules. There was no discussion in the car. When we got home, I had my usual chores. Dad went back out to the field.
Another time, the small bridge over a drain ditch, three miles from our farm, was out of commission. The bus driver let the ten or so of us students off the bus and we all walked the rest of the way home. Again, there was more discussion about the condition of the bridge than of wondering why I was late. That was all part of life.
Today, 2021, as I run an early morning errand, many of the mothers are out with their children at the bus stops. There is concern if the students get home a few minutes late.
On the other hand, I was fortunate to have a bus. Grandpa Sam had to walk the three miles to their school in Bully Creek, Oregon, in the early 1940s. My mother-in-law remembers going to school in South Seattle on a horse drawn wagon around 1915. The very first school buses, known as school hacks or school trucks, started out as horse-drawn carriages around 1886 — and most people didn't take them! Walking to school was expected, and these early buses only picked up kids who lived REALLY far away.
Going to school and riding on a bus has been the same for close to one hundred years.
![The picture is worth a 1000 ...]()
The picture is worth a 1000 words!
Mom and Grandma were banned from the kitchen on Mother's Day. 11-year-old found a recipe for Japanese Pancakes.
Here's what it looked like. I will post the recipe later.
It's my understanding that one can google Japanese recipes. I did so and found the Japanese Pancake recipe.
It's intimidating to use my electronic devices, but I'm working to do the best I can and keep learning. Exciting times ahead with the resources in my household!
![MY DAD THE FISH MAN]()
MY DAD THE FISH MAN
“Miya sama, Miya sama”, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s MIKADO was heard out of the Dodge truck as Dad loaded it each day - Japanese can goods from our basement cellar storage, Tofu from Amano’s, Gas at Kagi’s, Bread from Home Town Bakery, Dairy from Home Dairy and Fish and groceries from Ontario Fish Market.
The customers were the wives of Japanese farmers within a 70 mile radius from Ontario, Oregon, called the Treasure Valley on the Idaho/Oregon border. In the early years, 1940s and 1950s. We were all so poor we didn’t have time or cars to go in to town for groceries.
Dad liked playing his violin, his musical saw and singing in the church choir. He installed a musical horn on his truck with four notes. As he entered each farmer’s driveway he played a short musical tune.
Usually, the wife was out helping with something like weeding onions or thinning beets. She heard Dad’s music and came in from the field to do her shopping from the shelves along the walls of the van and the huge icebox that held the fish and meat products in the back. Soda pop was in crates in front of the shelves.
Dad bagged the groceries and carried them into the farmhouse kitchen and maybe had a cup of tea while he got paid and wrote out her order for his next delivery.
Dad was also the carrier of news and gossip. I often helped him in the summer, when school was out, so he could get home sooner. It was my job to close the icebox, clean off the cutting board and knife used to cut off the amount of fish or meat the customer wanted and take down the scale.
As I sat back down on one of the soda pop crates and went back to reading my Nancy Drew book, I could hear wafts of Dad’s laughter out from the kitchens.
On the way home on Thursdays, from Caldwell Ice Company, Dad loaded all the walking space on the truck floor with 100 pound blocks of ice for the Ontario Fish Market to put in their cold storage. We cut up the ice with ice picks for sale and for the ice boxes.
“The Fish Man” is unique to the Japanese Ethnic communities in America and mostly along cities on the West Coast where there were rural communities of Japanese Heritage residents. Japan is surrounded by the sea and my grandpa remembers the “Fish Man” walking to their farm houses, shouldering a pole with a basket on each end with samples of fish for sale.
In Japan there are still businesses with a fleet of vans with food items that supply households that are remote and sometimes the elderly that have a hard time going shopping. With Covid-Isolation we are experiencing door to door deliveries, but we don’t shop from a motor vehicle nor do we get serenaded with a musical horn.
![NOTRE DAME HIGH SCHOOL S...]()
NOTRE DAME HIGH SCHOOL SWIMMER
Our grandson, Zac, qualified for the Long Course Summer Junior Nationals. He did the 100 Fly with a smoking 56.35 at the Irvine Spring Cup Meet.
The butterfly stroke is one of the most difficult swimming strokes. It requires an exact technique, strength, rhythm and takes a lot of practice.
He goes to Notre Dame High School, not the college. I love their slogan: 'Educating Hearts and Minds'."
Swimming has been one of his family's main sports. Swimming develops flexibility in muscles and joints, strengthening muscles groups of both the upper and lower body without dangers of impact injuries. Mostly, it takes Practice, Practice, Practice - and many years of parent driving to practice and swim meets!
The USA Swimming Futures Championships and Speedo Summer Invitational will take place the first week of August 2021.
Go Zac!!!
![YIN - YANG]()
YIN - YANG
The Yin/Yang principle suggests, we are constantly influenced by good and bad choices as we live daily. The goal is to keep a balance. Yin (literally the ‘shady place’) is the dark area. Yang (literally the “sunny place’) is the brightly lit part of our lives. It is not the getting rid of the dark that will lead to fulfillment but rather an understanding of both dark and light.
A Japanese heritage example of this concept is the acceptance of elements of the Yakuza — Japanese Mafia. After both the 1995 Kobe earthquake and 2011 Fukushima Tsunami disasters reports were that the Yakuza were the first responders in helping.
One of the notorious Yakuza individuals in the Seattle area before WWII was a person referred to as “Kinpachi”. Two stories exemplify Kinpachi’s impact on our community.
As we gathered in Jack and Del Uchida’s kitchen in the early 1990s, on Seattle’s Beacon Hill, we shared our first OMOIDE stories. Jack told us about accidentally running into Kinpachi on the streets of Tokyo on one of his visits to Japan. He said, “I recognized him from a distance because he had an imposing body and his arms hung long like an ape.” Kinpachi had been deported back to Japan in the late 1940s because of his unlawful activities. Jack’s comments as he told us of the incident was that they met as friends.
Tak Kubota told me a story of when he was young and ran the movie projector at Nippon Kan Theater on 6th Avenue in Seattle’s International district. The Yakuza arrived regularly to get paid for being protectors before the show could go on. It is my understanding the same issue was true for a number of the early hotel and restaurant businesses owned by the first Japanese to immigrate and have businesses in Seattle in the early 1900s. There were incidents of racial harassment but Tak indicated the protection was extortion and uncalled for.
None of us were afraid of Kinpachi. His wife was a Sunday school teacher for Sam and my girls. His children are still upstanding members of our community.
Does that mean we approve of what Kinpachi did? No, that’s why we tell the story of a bad example. His career choices were wrong -- he was deported and he had to leave his family behind.
Every community and each social group have Yin/Yang elements. If you make bad choices there are consequences. Yakuza stories are “Yin” - colorful and fun to tell - for “Yang” results?!
Bio notes: Tak Kubota’s family were the creators of South End Seattle’s Kubota Japanese Garden and Tak also had a hand in establishing Kawabe House for retirement. Jack Uchida was one of the early Boeing Engineers and also engineered the famous Tsutakawa Fountains. He was likely on a trip to Japan to deal with one of the fountains.
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