Day #2 Tokyo: Seeing Our Relatives

I'm so exhausted, I can hardly see straight. It's after midnight but I'm determined to get this up even though I've got an early wake up call tomorrow.

We woke up at 3:00 this morning because of the time change. Not good! I had only 4 hours sleep. However, we got some computer time done and reviewed our options for today.

We had breakfast at the New Sanno which is a R & R hotel for active duty and retired military personnel. It's a lifesaver since hotels are quite expensive in Tokyo.

We caught the subway to the Shibuya Station to exchange our vouchers for JR railway passes. You can only purchase these out of country and are fabulous buys. We left my mother in our hotel room and my aunt came to help us with translations. Like I said before, she is so wonderfully helpful.

Once we got our passes, we had to reserve our tickets for all our train connections throughout Japan. Luckily, our friend in Japan had written everything out for us beforehand. I don't know what we would have done otherwise. We were still there for an hour and a half! However, we're relieved that it's DONE!
Since we were at the Shibuya Station, we took my aunt to see the Hachiko statue. They've even made a movie about that dog. I would attach the link but I can't think straight...

It was now about 12:30 and we knew my mom must be starving at the hotel. We looked around at all the different kinds of food for us to buy.

Mom was contentedly watching Japanese shows and had enjoyed being indoors out of the cold and rain, RAIN, rain.

After that late lunch, mom and Auntie rested while we did everybody's laundry.

At 4:30 my uncle and aunt came to pick us up in a taxi. It was great to see them. They took us to the Westin Hotel. We'd seen that hotel before from the outside but had no idea of the grandeur within.

I brought the family album and the two sisters had the most wonderful time talking to their "baby" brother about all they'd been through during the years after the war. He was still much too young at the time to understand the ordeal his family had gone through.

It was completely satisfying. Watching the two sisters laughing, teasing, happy and relaxed brought me incredible joy! It was everything I'd hoped for. I couldn't stop soaking in their smiles and chuckles of joy.

And then came the food. I've been to just a few fancy restaurants in my life but this blew us away. We had a beautiful private room that my uncle and aunt had reserved. Then came the courses. I think there were at least twelve courses... Is that possible?

I won't post all the photos. This was one of the first dishes. It was lima bean, tofu, crab meat in chestnut sauce.

The spring vegetable tempura was incredible.

This tempura at the bottom was an actual flower. Each dish was truly a work of art.

This was some kind of fish wrapped in a cherry blossom leaf and myoga (mild ginger of some kind) and sweet potato.

A plate of sushi arrived for each one of us. I ate it all! I really did. So did everybody else. The sushi was topped with clam, cuttle fish and tuna.

Then came this fish dish with some gobo (burdock root) with a sweet green onion.

Was this possible? Another plate of sushi arrived. No kidding. This time it was eel, abalone and tuna.

Then came the clam and miso soup. This is actually the second soup we were served.

And then came this plate of sushi.... or was this before? Yikes! I'm forgetting the order. I loved the broccoli sushi best.

The dessert was sakura (cherry blossom) mochi (glutinous rice). Absolutely wonderful!

This dinner will stand out in our memories forever. I shudder to think what this cost my uncle and aunt but they sure did give us a most incredible experience.

What an evening!

We returned to our hotel and got ourselves organized for our visit to Sendai to see my aunt. I'm looking forward to seeing those three sisters together. I hope I can stay awake for it. I hope we can get ourselves to the train station OK. I hope we're able to get the wheelchair around the rush hour mob OK. I hope we can get on the trains OK. I hope we can make the connections OK... Everything is a little trickier when you have to consider the wheelchair. I have a new understanding of what handicapped people must go through.

Day #1 Travel Day: Honolulu to Tokyo

My mother's injured knee was a real challenge. We were worried about the pain she'd be in to walk around. Therefore we called the hospital supply company, Aprias just to see what the possibility was of us purchasing a wheelchair even though they are closed on Sunday.

They opened the store for us and we bought a travel wheelchair. It's about 25 - 30 pounds and pretty sturdy. Still, it was daunting because we had so much luggage, a third filled with gifts. Adding a wheelchair to the mix was not something to take lightly but I couldn't see us taking the risk that my mother would be able to walk.


You can see what we had to deal with here. We were also worried that we would have to care for two 80 and almost 80 women who might find the travel daunting.


We got up this morning at 5:00 and were out the door by 7:00 for the 9:20 Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo. It was an 8 hour 10 minute flight.


My aunt took over caring for mom (her slightly older sister) right away. She has helped her go to the bathroom, pushed her wheelchair and watching over her, and mom is loving having her sister near her all the time. Art and I are really, really grateful to her. I can't believe how well this has worked out. My aunt is truly a godsend.


The sisters loved all the airplane food on Japan Airlines but opted not to watch the movies even though I tried to convince them that it would help kill the time.


Incredible as it may seem, the wheelchair has been a big help. We could use the handle bars to carry heavy bags as my brother suggested. It allowed us to board early with everybody being so wonderfully kind. When we arrived in Tokyo, Mr. Kikuchi insisted on taking us through on all the elevators which we'd never have found ourselves. He also got us a priority pass through the long, long, long passport lines!


He rode with us on the Tram to get our luggage and made sure that we got through everything quickly and comfortably. I could hardly believe it! My mother loved it!


We found these free luggage caddies that REALLY helped us cart our many pieces to purchase yen and tickets for the shuttle bus to our hotel.


We waited outside very briefly. The temperature was about 55 degrees so we weren't suffering very much.


We arrived at the New Sanno after a rather long 2.5 hour shuttle bus ride. I think my aunt was surprised to see guards with machine guns outside the hotel. It is a military hotel.


Our friends, the Koboris came to visit us at our hotel once we checked in. It was just wonderful seeing them again. We will be seeing them on Friday to visit a famous garden.


We ate dinner at the Emporium Restaurant at the New Sanno. We told my aunt that it would be the last western dinner she'd be eating for the rest of the trip.


The Coquille St. Jacques was quite nice. Mom and Auntie dug right into the pretty potatoes and tons of scallops.


The sisters then called their brother in Tokyo and sister in Sendai. Their brother suggested we rest at the hotel because the weather tomorrow is going to be cold and rainy... not the best conditions for mom. They would meet us at 4:00 for dinner and spend the evening together.

It's now 3:55 AM Hawaiian time and 10:55 PM Japan time. My eyes are red and I have no idea what I've written. I hope it makes sense.

Going to take a bath now.

Good night or maybe I should say, "Oyasumi nasai."

Would You Believe?

We're leaving for Japan on Monday. The tickets are bought, reservations made. Gifts have been chosen and packed for the trip along with the genealogy albums and DVDs I've slaved over. The suitcases have been packed for a week. We've got people scheduled to be at the house. We're picking my aunt up tomorrow morning to stay with us overnight so we can leave the following morning together VERY EARLY. We were ready.... more than ready.

And then it happened.


My mother's knee had already been bothering her for the past month but had been improving so that she could walk pretty comfortably. We were hopeful. Then as she was coming down the steps this afternoon, she was crippled by excruciating pain out of nowhere. She could barely walk with us almost carrying her. I gave her a pain pill and we took her to the emergency room at Kaiser.

I have to tell you that I'm really impressed with the Kaiser Permanente emergency room. The wait wasn't horrible. They took her in right away, got her X-rayed and was more than accommodating during our time there. There was a Patient Advocate who said she'd try to contact somebody about finding a low-cost wheelchair that we might be able to bring with us on our trip (although they're closed on Sundays). We thought we might have to cancel the trip. That would have been extremely expensive but what can you do?

The X-rays show nothing was broken but it didn't mean there wasn't some kind of soft tissue damage. They wrapped her leg in a substantial leg brace and prescribed medication for the pain.

So the trip is still on. What would we have done if this happened tomorrow?

The Amazing Mysteries of the Sphinx

Yesterday, my 3 year old granddaughter could hardly wait to show us on Skype that she had a huge Sphinx (stick on) tattoo applied to her arm. She'd gotten it as a present from our anthropologist neighbor who'd been to the British Museum.

We told her that we knew what the Sphinx was and had seen the real thing in Egypt.

Then late last night I thought I would check my old, old, old e-mail address that I no longer use just to make sure nobody had tried to get a hold of us. There were over 200 junk e-mails.

And then, I saw it... a name from the past. Chris! We'd met him during our trip to Egypt in November of 2007.

Chris was saying he'd be in Hawaii for a robotics conference and asked if we'd be available on the 18th? Arrrghhhh! 18th???? It was the 17th! Oh my gosh!

I sent him a message back right away saying we most certainly would be, but didn't hear back this morning. So I tracked him down via Internet and looked up his university and his work e-mail. That did the trick and he called right away.


Chris is Canadian and we have yet to meet a Canadian we didn't like. We spent a lot of time together in Egypt. Chris was one of the people who got me thinking about blogging. I don't know how to explain what he does. He's working toward his PhD. in aeronautical robotics or something like that... creating robots to work on the moon, etc. (Here we are sailing on the Nile.)


He was really good at getting around and especially at haggling (I mean, getting a good price). Here are Chris and Art in Petra,Jordan discussing the cost of a camel ride, I think.


We picked up Chris in Waikiki and took him up to Tantalus. We take everybody up there to get a bird's eye view of Manoa (University of Hawaii), Waikiki, Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, etc.

Ooops! Diamond Head, too!


Our next stop was the Nuuanu Pali where King Kamehameha battled and defeated Oahu's armies and sent the warriors over the cliff to their death. People go there for the view and to be buffeted by the strong winds. It was definitely WINDY today!!!


Another stop was to that Hitachi (monkey pod) Tree at Moanalua Gardens just because it was on the way to our house.


It's really a pretty place and Chris got to see taro being grown there. We had another stop at the Dole Plantation so he could see lots of different kinds of pineapples.

We had dinner, picked up his wife at the Honolulu International Airport who was arriving from Pittsburgh and took them to Waikiki. They're leaving for Kauai tomorrow morning. It was such a wonderful day!

Isn't it amazing that our granddaughter would show us that Sphinx tattoo yesterday?

Isn't it amazing that I happened to check that forgotten e-mail address last night? Not tonight, not tomorrow, not next week, but last night?

Isn't it amazing that today was the only day we could have met because Chris was leaving and we had a memorial service to attend tomorrow?

I just think it's pretty amazing!

The Delight of Turkish Tiles!

In November of 2005 Art decided we should go on a tour to Turkey. Why? Hmmm... perhaps because our son, Jon had gone the year before and said we really needed to see that incredible country. Although Jon and Sarah had gone on their own, we decided to book a tour instead. We weren't confident about finding our way around a part of the world that seemed unstable at the time.

As it turned out, it was one of the most fantastic trips we've ever taken and part of the reason was the fun and beautiful people we met on our tour. I've got way too many photos from that trip. I'll share them someday but for tonight I wanted to show you the set of Turkish tiles that Art finally mounted and framed after five years.


On one of our last stops we went to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.


The Bazaar was a maze of shops selling any kind of need-to-have thing you could imagine.


And this fellow convinced Art that he needed to have this set of 6 tiles. "Ummm...," I said, "How are you going to hang 6 tiles?"

The fellow said, "It's very easy. No problem. I give you good deal."

And did Art fall for that line?


As I said, for five years the two bags of tiles sat in our closet. At one point Art even considered tiling the front of the house with it.

However, no worries! Art came up with a plan. He created a frame out of wood and painted it black.


He got a piece of plywood and reinforced it.


Then he cemented the tiles to the board.


Once the tiles were mounted and dry, we had to find a place to put it. We tried different places and it just didn't seem right. Then I found the perfect place. I'd been wanting to hang something on this bathroom wall but it had too much Hawaiian sun. These porcelain tiles never fade. Perfect!


I love it! I hope the guests who use our bathroom like it, too. It's a lovely reminder of that wonderful trip.

And what does Jon say now?

"You guys should go to Iceland."

Hunh?

Project Completed... Sort of

After two months of being completely immersed in my mother's family history project ... I'm done. I was often up until 1:00 at night writing, organizing photos, researching, rewriting, etc. I printed the pages on my printer and then took them to Kinko's (Fed Ex?) and copied, collated and bound them into albums for my aunts and uncle. I printed the pages into pdf files and my brother, Dennis is organizing the photos and text into a more archival DVD for our cousins. He also designed the cover-title page which I totally love. I couldn't bring myself to share all this yet though.... and I don't know why.



I'm saying the project is completed, sort of because my aunt in Japan has said that my grandmother had more photos that the three sisters did not bring to Hawaii. She wants me to have them. So I do have more work when we return from Japan, but I'm pretty much done.

I am now overcome by a feeling of total lethargy. I'm drained. I don't understand it. I couldn't even blog.

At first my mother had a lot of difficulty with this project because it brought back all the horror. I was asking her to remember things she'd repressed for so long. Between, she and her two sisters here in Hawaii, they dredged up story after story and spoke about the experiences they suffered together comparing what they remembered.

I told my mother that what amazed me in all this is that aside from losing their 6 month old baby sister, they were saved time and again from certain death. They survived.

This morning, I went down to make breakfast. While I was preparing a hot mocha for her she said, "I had another dream last night. It was rather strange."

I held my breath, steeling myself for another horror remembered.

She smiled. "I was at a memorial service for my father. My sisters were there and we were all of the age when we were making that terrible escape. The funny thing is you and Dennis were there and you were the same young age as my sisters. We were together at my father's service. Art was there too, but he was in his 20's."

Then she laughed and went out to water her flowers in the sunshine.