Monday, June 22, 1998

Happy Birthday, Liz!

This morning we visited the Kurashiki City Hall. The building looks like a hotel. We had to wait for the Deputy Mayor to arrive so we looked at a photo exhibit of the bombing of Hiroshima. It was not too explicit, but was a bit disconcerting.

Like clockwork, the Deputy Mayor and the Chairman of the Board of Education arrived and the rather formal ceremony began. First, the Deputy Mayor welcomed us to Kurashiki; the interpreter, an Australian (?), already had a translation to read from. We stood across from the Deputy Mayor in a straight line in front of portraits of famous citizens of Kurashiki. When the Deputy Mayor finished, the Chairman of the Board of Education spoke. One of our group made a short speech in reply and gave two large presents to the Kurashikian officials.

After receiving a small gift from the Kurashiki-ites, we left for a bit of sightseeing. We drove south to Mizuma industrial area. We toured an old house and warehouse. There were many interesting commercial artifacts. We left the warehouse to drive up the hill above the port to a wonderful lookout point. We could see the entire Seto-Ohashi bridge. This set of Bridges connects the main island of Honshu to Shokoku (another of the four main islands). At one time, it was the longest bridge in the world.

After the longest drive in the world (only kidding) we arrived at Fisherman's Wharf. No, we did not drive to San Francisco. We were on one of the small islands that lie between Honshu and Shokoku. Fisherman's Wharf is a nice touristy market place with a restaurant on the second floor. We ate upstairs. This was the first of several seafood meals. Many in my group began to get nervous about the amount of seafood.

I was nervous about the cruise. That's right, a cruise. After lunch, we boarded a small ship for a 30 minute cruise under the Bridge. While waiting to board the ship I noticed a Japanese man photographing some of the FMFers. I thought he was intrigued by presence of Americans. I just ignored him. We boarded a ship designed to look like an old fashioned fishing vessel. The cruise was pleasant. When we got off the ship, a woman was selling photographs of us! It seems that the Japanese photographer from before the cruise was working for the cruise company. There was only one photo of me, and it was pretty bad. I did not buy it.

We did have chance to buy other stuff. We had about 20 minutes free at Fisherman's Wharf before we had to leave. Stephen, Ami, and I walked around and stopped at the arcade. We had to play some of the games. Ami picked a game where we had to bop alligators on the head with a mallet. It felt good to let out some aggression on those poor, plastic alligators. Ami and I got the same score in the first round so we had to have another round. After a fierce match, Ami proved to be the better alligator bopper. I was humbled and glad to learn that it was time to go.

We went to our first local industry visit. We arrived at a large house. Although it did not look like a factory, it was. This was the home of the famous paper doll. These dolls are made from rice paper and then painted. Most of the dolls are in the shape of the animal for whatever year it is. For example, this is the year of the Tiger, so he makes paper tigers. Next year is the year of the rabbit so the creator of these dolls had unpainted rabbits for us to decorate. It was blast to sit on the floor and paint a small white rabbit. At first, I tried to make mine look like the sample. I was doing all right when I slipped and made a funny line. From that point on, I had fun making my rabbit into an attack bunny.

Oddly enough, the artist did not ask to keep any of our rabbits to sell next year.

As thanks for his allowing us to visit his factory, most of us bought small tigers. I will give the tiger to someone, but the attack bunny is mine.

After the paper doll place, we returned to the hotel and called it a day.

Tune in again for more details. Thanks.

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