remembering ginza

ginza, tokyo, may 6, 2005

i've been to ginza many times while i was staying in tokyo for my first 2 and a half months in japan. then, ginza did not appeal to me as a must place to visit since i found the place too vain for a street boy like me. when i say street, i mean it as a place where the street children are. ginza sells items with brand names, not a tiangge, and therefore you expect prices which can cause headaches for a salary man. it is just too much a place for me.

however, during the golden week, i was invited by my host family to spend a 4-day holiday, all expense paid, with them. one night in a hotel around this place. now the place became memorable to me, not because i could now afford to shop in this area, but because once in my life, i had spent a good memory with my host family. what with the oysters in 4 different courses in one dinner which were ordered for me to consume. blurp!

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remembering the family


tsurumaki family plus me, saitama home (pic taken using kohei's fon)

i have known them through jice which organized a homestay during our nihonggo class in 2003. since then, we continue to communicate as we share the same interest in photography. kohei san, the father, holds a wide range of interests from IT to philosophy, he is also a street boy like me in his university days. (he spent 8 years for his undergrad studies). he seems to have an unconventional mindset, uncommon among japanese (di sya bagay sa iuj), but perhaps he could be passed on as a true blooded UPian. other than that, i also share the same interest with the boy, tatsufumi kun, as he talks too much, likes to sing (he taught me one japanese song) and very lively. during my stay in their house, he served as my waiter, assistant, playmate and he taught me 300 types of car which he identified by memory. at the age of 3, he already read hiragana. when his father asked him for a shinkansen look, he gamely formed his face to look like it. kohei's wife, yumi san, is a japanese literature major.

they are a wonderful family. this is the same family who surprised me by sending a dozen of 1-liter pineapple juice, del monte at that, and 8 bottles of 1.5-liter coke, after the earthquake. why del monte? because they had remembered i told them once that i like del monte pineapple juice. wow.

thanks a million to them for the opportunity.

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remembering the house



the archi-design of their house suits me well as i am planning now to build a house of my own in a very small residential area i have in my country. it maximizes the small land area they have, giving attention to functions and colors. however, the price doesn't suit me well --- 45mil yen, and that was 1o years ago.

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remembering the hotel


annex daichi hotel, tokyo, and view from the room window

a wide room like that and in tokyo at that, i felt like solomon in modern times. i am used to sleeping in a bench in a sidewalk, or in a train station, and having a hotel room is not something i desire for, but staying overnight in a place like this for free, i felt like an heir of the kingdom of bill gates and queen elizabeth combined together [exageration supplied]. this was a gift, and that gesture made my stay unforgettable.

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remembering other things

i do still remember the song tatsufumi painstakingly wrote in a piece of old paper which afterward he gave to me. at 5, he could now write well. i remember the italian restaurant for my last dinner and the never ending order of pizza and pasta, coffee and juice and cakes. i thought then that it was my last day on earth for i had eaten the most and the best. i can't forget the long walk from akihabara to ueno station, stopping at every shop we passed by (not literally, of course). i do remember the never ending talks and the long talk in the platform while waiting for the shinkansen. when i get back to my home country, i shall always remember.

this piece is written to tell that if there is one thing i am proud of, it is never of having a certificate for master's degree, but having a friend like kohei san and his family.