December 08, 2004 - Visitors

Yoko, Kanae, Tim and Asuka eating yakitori Me, Kanae and Asuka at our dining room table

Two nights ago Tim and I got together with 3 of the Japanese students who came to UW for a design exchange during my second year. (Kanae and Asuka were two of the four girls who stayed at our house for just over a week.) This week they were in Kyoto working in some very famous gardens with people from their university. I was green with envy. It was so much fun to hook up with them and hear what they are up to. They were all surprised to hear Tim speak bits of Japanese to them. Asuka set up the visit. She is very outgoing and fun to be around. She ordered our yakitori dinner for us. (Yakitori seems to be finger foods for accompanying an evening of drinking.) Asuka cries "tears of joy" when she is happy, and we love her for it! Kanae is very cool... into community, sustainability, handcrafted goods... and cows. She just returned from being a "willing worker" on a couple farms in Australia and New Zealand over the past year. She has rented a small room in Tokyo in one of the very old parts of town where there is a focus on community. She says that public baths are part of the communal facilities. She is a very centered and relaxed girl, and she loves cows. Now every time I look at her picture, I think of how sweetly she told me "I love cows." Yoko is very sweet and it was great to see her again. She introduced Tim to a friend of hers who is in the architecture department at the University of Kobe. She pointed out that her friend would be an excellent Japanese teacher and likewise pronounced Tim to be an excellent English teacher. After dinner in Sannomiya, we stopped by the market to pick up ice cream and wagashi treats (mochi cakes filled with red bean paste), then headed back to our house. We all had enough tea and dessert to fill us up.

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