Last day in Nagasaki

We TRIED to go to bed early the second night of our stay in Nagasaki because...  the next morning a few of us wanted to attend Mass at one of the Nagasaki churches. 

It seems that Mass is celebrated every morning at 6:00 am at the Urakami Church and so 5 of us met in the hotel hobby and took two taxis to the church.  Of course it was still dark outside!

I don't know when was the last time I've been to a Catholic mass but I stayed close Kaoru-san and Yumiko-san and tried to follow along in the readings and singing.  All I can say is that it is a very different worship service than the one I am used to with guitars and drums and raising of hands...  I don't know if Catholic services all over the world are celebrated the same way or if this mass was unique to Nagasaki.  All the women had veils, all the attendees were invited to celebrate communion or receive a blessing.  It was a wonderful, holy time in the early morning.

After the service as we watched the sky lighten and the city lights go out we noticed the priests still in their black gowns out in the courtyard doing Radio Calisthenics which are broadcast all over Japan.  Worship God, go do calisthenics.  That's a good way to start the day!

Back at the hotel we joined the others in our group for another big breakfast and watched ships come into the Nagasaki Harbor.   The hotel concierge told us that the big luxury liner just coming into the harbor was coming from China and the ship held 2000 guests.  They would spend the day sightseeing around Nagasaki and then in the evening the ship would depart for other ports in Japan.

And while we were enjoying the morning view, who should come into the restaurant but the couple that we had met on our first day at the elevator and at the Shitsu church!  We all stopped to talk even longer this time and learned that they had first met in Nagasaki (though they lived in another part of Japan) and they were interested to hear why the seven of us were visiting Nagasaki.  The couple was spending another night at this hotel and we explained that we were leaving this afternoon and wished them well.  Each time we've run into this couple we have talked longer and longer.  It is so nice that everyone is so friendly!

Our last day in Nagasaki we coordinated our schedules and then split up into different excursions.  Mari-san went to see the monument dedicated to the 26 martyrs of Nagaski, Hiroko-san went to a museum about the Industrial Revolution in Japan.  The rest of us headed for Dejima which was the entry port for trade and export when Japan first opened its doors to Western cultures.

Dejima was a man-made island of only one street where the foreign traders were kept separate from the city of Nagasaki and where only select Japanese could enter.  It seemed to be mostly western in style and custom and I was surprised at how small it was compared to the large part it played in Japanese history.

After touring the exhibits we settled down for a lunch of more Nagasaki specialties pork buns, soup and frozen ice milk. 

Heading back to our hotel we rode the cable cars to the Shofuku temple...

 and finally met up with Hiroko-san (Mari-san had found the main group at Dejima).

A final picture of the whole group in front of the hotel lobby's Christmas tree.  We said goodbye to Sachiko-san who was taking a different bus to a different airport and the rest of us boarded an airport limousine.  Not long after Sachiko-san mailed us with a message.

"On the way to the bus stop I ran into that couple again!  A very nice surprise ending!"

Such a great trip again!  Thank you Kaoru-san for planning it all!

Think I'm finished?  Nope.

On the airplane home, which wasn't a full flight, near the end of the trip the cabin attendant pointed out that we were coming up on Mt. Fuji if any of us were interested.  I am definitely interested as for all the years I've lived in Japan I've rarely seen Mt. Fuji!  I grabbed an empty window seat and snapped picture after picture.

Thank you for joining us on our photo filled trip!

The second day in Nagasaki

Our second day in Nagasaki started with a wonderful buffet breakfast on the 15 floor of our hotel overlooking the Nagasaki harbor. 

It was still dark when we went for breakfast because... our plans for this day was to visit a fishing village on the other side of Nagasaki and we needed to take an hour trip on a city bus and then change buses to go to the village.

As an aside...  After we finished breakfast we all gathered in front of the elevator and happened upon a man and his wife.  The wife "blended in" well with our little group because of age and size and the man joked that he couldn't find her in this "crowd".  He was a very chatty man pushing elevator buttons and acting the part of the hotel concierge.  One in our group even comment to the wife about her friendly husband and very nice voice.  A chance meeting in a hotel elevator.

It took awhile for us to get to the village and to the church that we were planning to visit.  A very simple rustic Catholic church designed and constructed by Father De Rotz who became a beloved patron of the village of Shitsu.  With the discovery of Hidden Christians in the area Father De Rotz devoted his life to the welfare of the village people establishing a church, a pre-school, a women's training center etc.  We heard about his work through a volunteer parishioner who spoke with emotion about Father De Rotz who had been active in the community when her great grandmother had been alive.

 A Japanese Bible at the front of the church.

As we were entering the church, who should we run into but the couple from the hotel elevator whom we had talked with that morning!  They had a rented car so they had gotten to the village before us and were just finishing up their tour.  We chatted a bit longer about where we all were from and then wished each other a wonderful trip.  Like running into old friends!

We visited a small museum with articles from Father De Rotz lifetime and there was a very old pump organ that had been used in the church and the pre-school that Father De Rotz had had sent from France.  The woman at the front desk said the organ still made sound if any of us was interested in trying to play it and Eiko-san got pushed to the keyboard.  Eiko-san is a piano teacher and travels Japan to evaluate young pianists in competition.  I was very moved to hear the hymn that Eiko-san could just sit down and play.   It was a very old hymn that I had first heard my old pastor's wife play on a pump organ 40 years ago when I came to Japan.

The Shitsu Church up on the hillside, with the other buildings that Father De Rotz later established, was the ideal place for the Hidden Christians as it is surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains and thus when Christianity was banned in Japan, the faith quietly survived until Father Dr Rotz arrived.  In other parts of Japan, Christians were persecuted and forced to renounce their faith by stepping on images of Jesus and Mary but as the village of Shitsu was only accessible by sea, the whole community stayed Christian into most of this century.

Looking out to sea from an overpass.

I found the overpass railings very interesting as while most Japanese railings may have cherry blossom motifs or maple leaf motifs, or bird motifs, this town had crosses.  How unusual in Japan!

Crosses even in the vertical grids.

One of the reasons we even NOTICED the crosses in the overpass was because we had discovered that the next bus to our planned destination was nearly an hour later and so we chose to walk to the next bus stop rather than just stand around waiting.  Well, the bus stops were few and far between and we ended up walking the whole way most of it uphill!

We did see beautiful scenery when we stopped panting long enough to look up!

We finally sat down for lunch at a small restaurant overlooking the sea and then we visited the Shusaku Endo museum, the Japanese Christian author who had written Silence.

We arrived home from our bus trip tired and maybe a bit silly.  We picked up food to eat from a station supermarket and went back to the hotel to change into pajamas and relax.  This was an alcove in our room...  maybe for decorations...   It seemed like a good place to practice Zen meditation...  if I knew Zen meditating.

Hiroko-san is pretending to be a sleeping Buddha...

"Come on, Mari-san!  Join the hilarity!"

Mari-san is the organized, scholarly personality in our group and she waved us off as she was taking her duties as treasurer very seriously and making sure we were still on budget.

 Well done ladies!  We learned a lot today and had a lot of fun too!

First day in Nagasaki!

Nagasaki is now a booming harbor city with buses and streetcars running constantly to and fro, tall buildings and layers and layers of homes on the hillsides.  I think it has been compared to San Francisco because of its hilliness (though I haven't really visited San Francisco so I don't know.)

The first place our group decided to visit was the Oura Catholic Church built in 1864 as a place of worship for European residents arriving to settle in Nagasaki.  Not long after the church was constructed, a group of hidden Japanese Christians asked to be allowed to share in the worship at the new church.  The Japanese Hidden Christians belonged to a Christian community that had maintained their faith during the nearly 250 years of Japanese ban on Christianity.

The discovery of Japanese Christians was considered the first miracle of the Oura Catholic Church!

Martin Scorsese's movie, Silence based on the book by Shusaku Endo, tells the story of how Japanese Christians were persecuted and their faith tested during the Japanese ban on Christianity. It is really an amazing story and our trip to Nagasaki followed much of the Hidden Christian history.

The Oura Church's "Our Lady of Japan".

Above the church, was the Scottish merchant's Thomas Glover's home and gardens and we climbed a lot of steps and slopes to get there! 

And here is the highest point in the garden, the dock house.

 And here is the beautiful view of the harbor!

 I'm the one taking the pictures again.

Not a great photo but I had to take it for Marlene because she told me if I went to Glover Garden, someone had to sing something from Madame Butterfly as the opera is based in Nagasaki.  None of us can sing but there was a sound track of the opera floating through the gardens...

Night was falling and it was getting cold so we headed back to the church and then into the city to look for something warm for dinner.

 Nagasaki at night is considered one of the most beautiful night cityscapes in the world.

And the church at night was just lovely and right out of a Christmas storybook!

For dinner we had Champon which is a Nagasaki Chinese specialty dish.  Great first day in Nagasaki!

 

Trip to Nagasaki!

I've been away for a few days with my friends on an annual trip and I've got lots of pictures and tales (and history) to tell.  This is probably going to take a few days to relate it all...

For the past 5 or 6 years my friends (they are also my English students but are so proficient in English it is not really a class anymore, just chatting and such in English) and I have taken a trip somewhere in Japan.  There are seven of us all together and it takes some shuffling to get everyone's schedules to fit together but Kaoru-san is just great as coordinator and every year she puts together an itinerary, buys tickets at discount prices, makes reservations at hotels and on trains and maps out interesting places that she thinks we should visit.  She often has already been to some of these places and seems to know what season is best, when things are blooming or has the right amount of snowfall or is in the middle of a festival etc.  This year we decided we wanted to go to Nagasaki, Japan which is at the southern-most tip of the main island of Japan.  And so for the first time we made plans to fly together... to Nagasaki!

Nagasaki is famous for many things... the city was destroyed in the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan, ending World War II, it was the first door to open to western cultures for import and export purposes and it was also the center of Catholic missionary activity.  For a time, Catholicism thrived in Nagasaki but later feudal lords banned the religion and 26 believers were martyred by crucifixion.  For nearly 200 years Christians were persecuted with the faithful hidden away on nearly unreachable small islands and villages only approachable by sea.  In 1889 the Christian ban was finally lifted and the "Hidden Believers" were at last to practice their faith openly.  Nagasaki remains today as Japan's Christian center.  By the way, did you know that the population of Christians in Japan is still only 1%?

Anyway...  To begin my trip!

Kaoru-san and Yumiko-san went to Tokyo and to Haneda Airport hotel on Friday but four of us took a 6:00 AM limosine bus from Tochigi prefecture to Haneda Airport three hours away on Saturday morning!  Only Sachiko-san, who now lives in Central Japan made her way to Nagasaki by her own route.  Hiroko-san, Yumiko-san, Kaoru-san, Mari-san, Eiko-san and myself came from Tochigi and after meeting at the airport check-in counter we went to have breakfast in the airport coffee shop.  (My friends at the coffee shop in the order that I've introduced them...  I'm taking the picture.)

Oh.  There I am!  Do you think I'm excited about this trip?  Already a bit flighty and not even in an airplane!

We had a nice breakfast, we headed to the boarding gate, we got on the plane for a 9:00 take-off, we boarded the plane and took our seats, and we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And after more than 30 minutes an announcement was made that there was some sort of electrical malfunction and we all disembarked from the plane and were taken BACK to the terminal by bus and we ended up back next to the original coffee shop!  And there we sat again for another hour!  Well!  Not a great start to our trip but when 6 chatty ladies are together the time goes by quickly and FINALLY we were off and flying to Nagasaki!  We arrived three hours later than planned but we got to the very nice hotel that Kaoru-san had arranged for us and we met up there with Sachiko-san.  Yeah!  We've all made it!

The seven of us always bunk up the same way...  The four "younger" of us who have yet to make a name for ourselves in the Japanese room, and the three veteran travelers, who call themselves "the Volcanoes" because one year the three of them got stuck in Europe when Mt. Eyjafjallajokull erupted, in the Western room.. 

The hallway leading to the Japanese style room.  This is on the 6th floor of a 15 floor hotel!  It looks like a Japanese garden walkway!

When the futon were spread out there wasn't much space left to walk around but when the futon were put away it became quite a large room.

This was the room in the morning with the garden below's treetops shadowed against the paper windows.

But no time to waste!  We all gathered right away in the hotel lobby and took off for the first of our sightseeing adventures around the city!  First stop, Oura Church!

Stupid Bank!

I was so absolutely frustrated and annoyed yesterday!  I came home exhausted and with a headache!  My story isn't really a plea for help, just a venting of I don't know what!

Last week sometime I decided I was going to empty out a bank account that I have been keeping for Takumi since he was a child.  I did the same thing for Leiya last year taking her the "not-a-lot of savings" when I saw her last year in November.

"You can use it for your wedding dress..."

This time however I don't plan to hand over an envelope of money to Takumi, (the way it is often done in Japan) but to have the funds sent by remittance directly to his bank account.  A-ha!  But Japan is notorious about red tape and regulations so I went to the bank (post office bank... long story, until recently considered the most reliable type of banking in Japan) with my family chop in hand .  Chops are used instead of signatures in Japan.

"Okay...  I want to empty my son's account.  See, I have the chop right here that I used when I opened the account (and I was the one who opened the account).  I want to have the money transferred to my son's American bank account and since I already understand that I have no legal right to send money from HIS account, I want to put the same money into MY account and then send it from there.

Why I have legal right to empty out his account I don't know but with the chop I do... 

"We are so sorry.  We no longer can transfer money from this branch of the bank.  You will have to go to the main branch downtown to do that.  The law was changed earlier this year.  Also, your legal right to empty your son's account only is up to the such-and such an amount.  Your son's account has a tiny bit more money in it.  Please take out half of your son's account funds in two separate transactions on two separate days."

Fine.  I gave the nice lady my chop, I filled out the withdrawal forms I filled out the deposit forms for my own account, the money was transferred into my account, I'll come back another day for the rest.  And I did, yesterday.  No problem yet.

I went down to the main bank fully expecting to transfer the money now in MY account to Takumi's bank.  I even brought 10 years of bank transaction records that I'd kept of sending money to Takumi when he was in college in California, and to Leiya's home-stay family when she was in high school and also to Leiya when she was in college.  Over the years I've made a lot of bank transactions to my kids in America!

I explained again, putting my chop on the counter along with my bank book, pointing to my pile of papers. 

"We are so sorry.  It seems that your MY NUMBER is not registered with your bank account.  You are not allowed to transfer money to another bank unless your MY NUMBER is registered."

MY NUMBER is sort of like the US Social Security Number but this system only began in Japan four or five years ago.  There was NO MY NUMBER when I started the accounts. 

Okay.  I need a MY NUMBER card to prove I have a MY NUMBER.

"Can't you just accept my Alien Registration card (which I had on me) or even my American passport?  (which I also had in my purse.)

"We are so sorry.  I know it is a bother.  We only accept MY NUMBER cards."

Fine, I said a bit irritated.  That means I'll have to get Tetsu to go down to the city hall to get a MY NUMBER card.  I'll do what I have to do.

"ALSO...  In order to transfer money to your son's account we need proof of your relationship with your son..."

"WHAT!!!  How am I supposed to prove that my son is my son?!  What does it matter if I'm sending money to my son or to whomever I want?"

"Those are the rules.  You have to prove a relationship.  You may do this by bringing in a copy of your family registry with both your names on it."

This is more complicated than the bank people know.  BECAUSE JAPAN DOESN'T PERMIT FOREIGNERS ON THE FAMILY REGISTRY!!!  It is so ridiculous.  (There is a way to get around this but I wasn't going into details then or now.)

"I'm not ON the family registry!  How am I supposed to prove this?  What does it matter if I want to send my OWN money to whomever I want, whether it is my son or not?!"

"We are so sorry.  Those are the rules." 

The nice lady at the counter had called over a supervisor to stand next to her and bow deeply at me while they both explained the RULES!  Dang it all, everyone is so dang NICE while they roadblock me completely!!!

"Okay....  I guess I'm going to have to get my husband involved in this.  Please write it all out for him IN JAPANESE because I'm not going to be able to explain it all (without him telling me I'm mistaken)."

"And we are so sorry to tell you that you also have to have proof of what your son intends to do with the money once he gets it."

"WHAT!!!!???  He's going to use it!  He's getting married!  He's planning to live his life in the States!!!  He doesn't need a bank account in Japan!!!"

"That's not a good enough reason...  "

(They had the audacity to say that!)

"Listen, I did the same thing for my daughter last year.  I emptied her account, I took it to America, she used it to buy a wedding dress."

"Oh, that is very good!  You can have your son say that he plans to use the money for his wedding!  That is a very good reason."

"Fine...  That's what he's going to do."

"So now you will need to supply us with a printed message from your son saying that he is going to use the money you send for his wedding.  Anything that has proof that he is going to have a wedding."

"And then, so sorry to say, that there will be a delay of a few weeks or months while the bank checks all the legal files that you submit and also confers with the US bank.  It is possible that your files will be returned to you and more additions will be required.  And were you aware that a money transfer charge of $50 will be applied?  We suggest you complete the transaction as soon as possible because from January the fee will be $70."

I really about lost it.  They wrote it all down.  They apologized long and with great sighs.  They bowed and offered help with any other problems I might have and cheerfully explained that I could just take the money from my account and carry it away with me...  They were just not able to SEND it.

As predicted, when I stormed into the house telling Tetsu, he didn't believe me and poo-pooed by efforts. 

"You've got it wrong, Tanya.  You're not making sense.  That's ridiculous."

I pulled out my handwritten paper from the bank and the many pamphlets they'd given me and handed them to him and then stormed upstairs. 

     In compliance with the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act and other laws, we must confirm the purpose of each remittance at the time of application...  For this reason, remittance purposes should be described specifically, such as "payment for books," "living expenses for children", "academic society membership fee," "donation" and so on. 
     We may also require documents after accepting the remittance in order to check further details of the purpose of the remittance, the resource of the remittance and the relationship between the payee, etc.  If so, please be reminded that some extra days will be needed.

It's all there in black in white on the bank's Guide to International Remittances pamphlet. 

I'm now planning to figure out how to cut off all relations with this bank.  So there!

Christmas quilts

As you may have guessed from the lack of mention on my blog, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Japan.  Many years we will get together with the Yamadas at their house for Thanksgiving but this year the Yamadas were in the States visiting their family thus the holiday went past Tetsu and me un-noticed...

I have though started thinking about Christmas because I just recently finished another McKenna Christmas quilt.

More than 5 years ago three of my patchwork friends and I fell in love with the McKenna Christmas quilt series and though none of us had ever done art quilts we ordered four kits and figured with each other's support we could figure out how to make them.  I THINK (but I don't know if I remember correctly) that those kits had pre-cut pieces and I do remember that the fabric was all included...  I chose to do the large horizontal pattern with lots and lots of animals on it.  Mrs. Furui chose to do a pattern with bears and a snowman.  Another friend chose to do the cardinals and stockings and a third friend chose to so the Santa and reindeer.

Well, McKenna's fabrics were just gorgeous and we had ever so much fun making the rather expensive quilts.  After a year or two went by I decided I wanted to do the cardinal pattern also and added that to my wall.  I still haven't gotten around to borrowing Mrs. Furui's pattern of the snowman... but alas, the third friend moved away...

Mrs. Furui and I have often said that if we could ever get a hold of the McKenna kits for the last two or three Christmas panels we would definitely splurge and buy them as McKenna stopped selling the kits though she still has a few patterns on her website.  A couple of years ago when looking at McKenna's website I noticed that the Santa pattern was on sale but not as a kit...  Could I figure out enough appropriate fabrics from my own stash?  I clicked the BUY button and bought the Santa pattern and the next summer when I was in the States I even found some batik fabric for the starry night sky but then the project got put away in my cupboard.

This fall I decided to do the Santa Christmas panel and though the batiks aren't as beautiful as the custom fabric from the original, the quilt came out very nicely!  I love all the embellishments that can be done...  The beading on the reindeer, the cording for the reins.

The cardinal panel that I made later was made with leftover fabrics from the animal panel... the border fabric is the same in both.  Purple ribbon on a blue pine cone background. 

For the Santa panel I found similar purple fabric in my stash and actually used the very last of the pine cone fabric that I'd saved protectively!  So there is still SOME continuity in the three quilts.

I suppose on my wall I really should put Santa up in the sky and the animals down under him but that's not how these three quilts fit on my small wall.  If nothing else, I am ready for Christmas just in my living room!