Friday, August 18, 1989
Attend school this morning from 09:00 to 12:00. This afternoon Tonai-sensei and his wife drive us to Bungo Takada where Tonai-sensei's wife's brother's family lives. (I think their name is Hayashi, but Tonai-sensei only refers to them by relationship and I'm never good at catching someone's name anyway, even in English, unless I see it written down first.)
The live in a large modern house in the middle of a rice field. After a feast of a dinner, they dress me up in a yukata and all of us go to the town square to participate in the bon odori. The entire town must be there. A stage is erected in the center of the square and the crowd circles the platform in dance...the Japanese equivalent of a conga line? Well without the physical contact.
Saturday, August 19, 1989
We spend the night with the Hayashi's (as everyone has had too much to drink and it's a long drive in any case.) They have a son about the same age as JQS and the two of them spend all their time together playing video games--the real language of internationalization--at least among 10-year-old boys. I'm mesmerized by their bilingual television. It's the first news of the outside world I've seen or heard in three weeks and I can't take my eyes off the TV set.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
August 22, 2002
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Tonai-sensei's wife's brother's family prepared a feast for us. Notice that the TV is in the tokonoma.