Call Me Ran-Chan

A long time ago in a city called Yatsushiro, there lived a feudal lord who was always being deceived by one of his subordinates – a man named Hikoichi. One day, he resolved to never be deceived again.

This story takes place on a day in late spring, more specifically the latter part of mid May. The feudal lord, or “Tono-sama” in Japanese, was playing Shogi(1) with one of his servants. During the game, Hikoichi strolled in grinning from ear to ear.

“Ah, here comes Hikoichi,” Tono-sama said to himself, “I must be careful not to be deceived by him today.” Keeping him in view with a sideways glance, he continued his game of Shogi. Tono-sama, however, couldn’t help but lose is concentration in the presence of Hikoichi, and eventually lost the game.

Tono-sama was annoyed. If Hikoichi hadn’t come, he probably would have won the game. This thought vexed him further.

“Hikoichi. Today, I absolutely won’t let you trick me. Last time I saw you, you said you were fishing for Kappa(2) and tricked me in to giving you a lot of whale meat. Well, from now on I’ll be more wary.”

“Tono-sama, Please don’t talk about what’s happened in the past, it is awkward.”

“Yes, yes. I’ve learned from the past. By no means will you trick me again.”

Hikoichi sat down next to Tono-sama, still grinning.

“Hikoichi. When you smile like that, it puts me in a bad mood. If you’re thinking of trying to trick me again you can forget it. I won’t believe a word you say today.”

“Ah! It’s no good. It’s obvious you won’t be tricked today, so I may as well go home. Tono-sama, you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Hah! Hikoichi gives up? Looks like I’ve won today. I’ll never be caught again. I’ll tell you what. If you can trike me, I’ll give you three bags of rice.”

“Tono-sama, give it a rest. Arguing over tricking and being tricked is a waste of time.”

Hikoichi, still smiling, began to eat some manju(3). Visibly relaxed, Tono-sama began eating the manju with him. When there was only one manju left, Hikoichi suddenly burst out laughing. Surprised, the Tono-sama said,

“Gah! You surprised me. I really can’t relax with you laughing like that.”

Keeping a wary eye on Hikoichi, he ate the last manju in one bite. Hikoichi, with an innocent face, sat down next to Tono-sama and looked toward one of the servants.

“You there. Today Tono-sama won’t take my company, so shall we talk?”

Tono-sama kept his gaze purposefully out in to the garden, pretending not to listen. Despite his ruse, his overwhelming desire to listen in on Hikoichi’s conversation showed plainly on his face. Hikoichi began speaking in a whisper.

“Listen to this. This year I am growing some sweet potatoes, and the size of them! If two men stretched their arms around one of them, they could just barely touch each others’ fingertips, that’s how big my sweet potatoes are. I would wager that one is enough to feed three hundred men.”

Said the servant, surprised, “Big enough for two men to stretch around? That has got to be the biggest sweet potato in all of Yatsushiro!”

“Yep. I have to think there probably isn’t a potato bigger in all of Higo(4)! Ha, ha, ha.”

“You’re probably right. It might even be the biggest in all of Japan!”

Tono-sama, who had been listening to the entire conversation, finally erupted.

“Come, come, Hikoichi! Don’t tell lies! There is no way you could grow a sweet potato that big. You think you had us fooled, but I know better.”

“I guess you’re right. I might have exaggerated a little. In truth, the size of my sweet potatoes is about like this.” Hikoichi stretched out his arms and made a large circle.

“Even with that size, your potato would probably be the largest in Japan. You’ll be a celebrity for your potato growing.” said the servant.

Tono-sama, shaking his head, said, “Ridiculous. It’s still too big. It’s got to be smaller! I don’t believe you.”

“If that’s the case, how about this? Tono-sama, is this a size you can believe?” Hikoichi pointed at a nearby basin.

Angrier, Tono-sama said, “No. It’s still too big.”

“Ah. How about the size of this wine cask?”

“No. Still too big.”

“It can’t be helped. You’ve won. It’s really only as big as this planting pot.”

“No, that’s still too big. It’s got to be smaller.”

Tono-sama and Hikoichi argued over the size of the sweet potato while it got smaller and smaller. Yet Hikoichi’s smile grew and grew.

“This has to be the end. Will you believe that my sweet potato is at least as big as a soda bottle?

“Yes, yes. The sweet potato you’ve grown, that’s about the right size for it. I can believe that. What say you? You haven’t beaten me today.”

“Ha, ha, ha! Ahh, it’s strange!”

“Hikoichi! You have nothing to laugh at. It is you who are strange.”

“But, Tono-sama. It is yet only May. I’ve only just planted my sweet potatoes, so this argument is meaningless!”

“….”

__________________________

(1) Shogi: a strategic board game known as “Japanese chess”.

(2) Kappa: mythical Japanese water-dwelling creature.

(3) manju: A steamed dumpling filled with sweet bean paste.

(4) Higo: Previous name for the Japanese prefecture of Kumamoto, in which lies the city of Yatsushiro.

In northern Kumamoto on the way to Fukuoka lays the city of Tamana, and within the city of Tamana can be found a district called Nankan.  In Nankan there is a water mill, and this is the site of a famous incident a long time ago, involving a local man named Toku.

One day a young woman was working in the river next to a wheat mill.  Diligently at her work, she suddenly became aware of a hand groping her rump.  She screamed and fled, and told Toku of what had happened.  Toku told the young woman that he would find her molester and set a trap at the river, dressing himself in the clothes of a fashionable young woman.  Sure enough a hand came to cop a feel, and when Toku saw the arm he cut it off at the shoulder.  The maimed miscreant fled deeper in to the water.

A few days later a mysterious young woman came to Nankan to ask to see Toku’s claimed arm in his wooden box, for his story had become famous throughout the region.  Upon being shown the arm, the woman snatched it up and fled towards the river.  As she ran her visage transformed, and lo! She was, in reality, a Kappa!  After Toku had captured her, she explained that she was none other than the daughter of Gawataro, the lecherous Kappa whose arm had been cut off by Toku.  She had come to reclaim her father’s lost arm, for Kappa know a medicine that can reattach severed limbs.  Toku said he would give her back the arm if she shared this secret medicine with him.  She left with the arm, and returned a few days later to teach Toku how to make the medicine.

That is the story of the waterwheel in Tamana.

The other day a friend of mine, a Japanese language teacher at a Japanese public school, sat down to eat lunch with me.  We began talking about the haiku, and I asked him how the poetic form came to be.  Here’s what he told me.

A long time ago, around 700 CE, the dating scene in Japan was a lot different.  Women of society rarely left their homes, and when they did they kept their faces covered with their sleeves.  And so the boys around town, no less hot to trot then their progeny for the aeonian itch, had to come up with creative ways to woo their women.

First, a boy might hear a rumor around town that over at the Tanaka’s, there was a new babe who just moved to the countryside from Nara.  The boy would go sneak up to the window of her room and confirm the rumor.  Then, if the boy was moved enough to try to pursue her, he would write her a poem and slip it through her window.  The haiku.

Now the girl had two options, having read the poem.  If the guy was poor shakes with a pen, the girl could just crumple up his letter and throw it in with the rest of the burnable garbage.  If she was intrigued by the letter, then she would unlock the gate to her house at nightfall.

The boy would come at night, and check to see if the gate had been unlocked.  If it had, he would sneak in, politely leave his shoes at the entrance, and whisper in the dark with the girl until morning, when he make his escape with his conveniently placed sandals.

For two more nights this behavior would follow, allowing that the girl kept unlocking the gate.  After the third night, the girls parents would hide the boy’s shoes so that when morning came, he couldn’t leave and was forced to have breakfast with the family, where the boy would sweat as the parents sipped tea and spoke of bride price.

There you have it, the history of the haiku from a credible source.

In Yatsushiro, at a place called Tokufuchi (徳淵), there stands an epitaph which describes an invasion of Kappa.  The character 徳 in 徳淵 means “prosperity,” assigned to the name because the port at that part of Yatsushiro was known for its accumulation of wealth.  The epitaph, carved about 1500 years ago, describes a large group of Kappa who migrated from China in the hopes of living in Yatsushiro.

What cued the erection of this monument was a section of the works of Akaishi Satou, “Yamadou Meiyu” (山童明遊, Mountain Child Wise Play).  The section includes the following:

“Kyusenbon, leader of the Kappa, led a troupe south along the Yellow River and in to the Yellow Sea.  In this sea lived a monster which went by the name of ‘Umiwaka.’ Kyusenbon and his troupe led an assault on Umiwaka.  Narrowly escaping defeat, the group of Kappa swam to Yatsushiro, a port city on Kyushu, an island of Japan.”

This story has been handed down through generations in Yatsushiro for the last 1500 years.  The story includes detailed descriptions of the Kappa, including webbed fingers, water bowls on their heads, and turtle shells on their backs.

There are many theories about this event, but in of the more rational theories, the continental immigrants were not Kappa, but Chinese refugees.  In the summer festival in Yatsushiro, there is an event that recalls a group of Chinese people from the time of the Wa Dynasty, about 1500 years ago, who fled to Japan in order to escape a violent revolution in China.  The appearance of these people and their clothing was eccentric to the Japanese of the time.  From this, the story of the Kappa of Yatsushiro was derived.

八代の河童

八代に「徳淵」という所があります。そこに碑文があります。その碑文には１５００年前河童が八代に住むため泳ぎ着いたと書いてあります。この碑文が建てられた理由は佐藤垢石の本、「山童明遊」に次のように書かれています。

「九千戊（配下に河童九千匹を持っているという）の一行は黄河を東へ下って黄海に出た。この海には海若と称する怪物がいる。これに九千戊一行は襲撃されて苦労したが、かろうじて難をのがれ、日本国九州島の八代と称する浜へ泳ぎ着いた。今から数えて千五、六百年のむかし、仁徳天皇の頃であったという話である。」

この話には河童は頭の上に皿があり、背中には甲羅、そして水かきのある手や足がついている動物とあります。

この話のようにいろいろな説があります。一つは、１５００年前中国の戦火の頃に中国から亡命者が八代に来ました。当時の日本人は中国人の服やその様子を見たことがなかったので、その様子をきみょうだと思い、河童が来たという話になりました。

My last weekend was spent contrasting old and new in Kosa, a mountain town hugging the Midori River about ten kilometers southeast of the city of Kumamoto, with two young friends and a group of men who were our seniors in age and yet were senescent in nothing.  The objective of our foray was the hardscrabble task of making charcoal.

We began by completing a motorcade of small white kei-trucks at a small thicket of tall, skinny oaks.  Within two hours we had made a considerable clearing.  The old men went about their work quickly and efficiently, recalling the muscle memory of factory workers – in a sense thoughtless, automatic.  Their efficiency wasn’t lost on my friends and I as we dove out of the way of falling trees, or as in one’s case, took the impetus of a tree canopy directly, sending him rolling head over feet down a hummock.

When the wood had been gathered and each of the seven or eight trucks was engorged with a mess of leaves we drove together to the dug out earthen oven in which the charcoal would take form.  I enjoyed chainsawing branches to fit the dimensions of a cord, and also exploding bamboo trunks with a wooden mallet. After the wood was cut and loaded in to the furnace, the crawl space was sealed off with brick.  To prevent heat from escaping through the entrance, we slung a viscous mud against the bricks to stopper any cracks.

The manual labor finished and the oven belching smoke (the smoke hit the roof, where pitch collected and was funneled in to a bucket for later use as an insect repellent), we all sat down to a feast of boxed lunches, homemade stew, grilled deer and enough booze to allow a suspension of our aches and pains.

In Kosa,

Old lumberjacks,
New baseball caps,

Old technology,
New demand,

Old residents,
Few replacements

Old Japan,
New Japan

One night the king of Uto castle had a craving for mochi, so he snuck out of his castle and walked to a mochi store in town.  The girl working in the shop did not recognize him as the king, so after the king finished eating she asked him to pay his bill.  The king didn’t normally pay for anything and therefore didn’t have any money on him.  He tore off a sleeve from his robes and gave it to the girl, promising that if she brought the cloth to the castle the next day, she would be paid for the mochi.

The next day she showed the king’s cloth to her boss, who was horrified that she asked the king to pay for the mochi.  “He’s going to kill you and your family because of your rudeness!” he told the girl.  The girl was brave, and went to the castle to beg the king to kill her for her ignorance and leave her family alone.  The king was impressed by her courage and kindness, and so rewarded the girl and her family with a large amount of money.

Uto’s mochi is still famously delicious today, and is nicknamed kosode mochi (小袖餅), or sleeve ricecake.

小袖餅

昔々、宇土城のお殿様はお餅が食べたくなり、お城を抜け出し、町の茶屋に行きました。茶屋の女中はその方がお殿様だと知りませんでした。ところが、お殿様がお餅を食べた後で、女中は支払いを求めました。お殿様はお金を持っていなかったので、お殿様の着物の小袖をお取りになりました。

次の日、女中は店の主人に小袖を見せました。主人は激怒しました。「おまえは失礼な事をしたから、おまえの家族は殺されるぞ！」と言いました。女中は勇気があったので、お殿様に容赦してもらうために宇土城まで小袖を持って行きました。女中の勇気にお殿様は心を動かされ、お殿様は女中と彼女の家族に富を授けました。

宇土の小袖餅は今でもうまくて、有名です。

Mount Gankai

Kumamoto is famous for its natural beauty, particularly central and southern Kumamoto.  From a mountaintop in southern Kumamoto City, you can see Nagasaki’s volcanic Mt. Unzen, The famous islands of Amakusa, the world’s largest caldera at Aso, and several other small mountain ranges.  My favorite mountains are Tomiai’s Mt. Gankai, and Uto’s Mt. Haku.

Tomiai and Uto share a border north to south.  The folk tale says that on each mountain, Gankai and Haku, there lived two ogres.  One day, the ogres got in to an argument that escalated in to a fight.  The two ogres began hurling giant boulders at each other.  Eventually, the ogre living on Mt. Gankai lost the fight, and was forced to move his mountain toward Tomiai.  Even today, you can see large boulders lying oddly out of place in the tidal flat that separates the two mountains.

Mt. Gankai’s name comes from the legend of Chinzeihachirou Tametomo, a famous samurai (otherwise known as Minamoto no Tametomo) who 900 years ago was the master of Kiwara castle in Tomiai.  Tametomo was famous for his archery.  It was said that his left arm was around six inches longer than his right, allowing for a longer and more powerful draw on the Japanese longbow.  He would often go to the top of a nearby mountain, then called Mt. Kiwara, and shoot down the geese that flew over its ridges.  The legend goes that Tametomo was so skilled at shooting down the geese that they began to avoid the mountain, flying around it rather than over.  So the mountain came to be known “Gankai” which translates to “Geese fly around.”  I haven’t seen any geese anywhere near Mt. Gankai.  But then, I haven’t seen any geese anywhere in Japan.

雁回山

熊本市の南の方ではとてもきれいな自然がたくさん見られます。高い展望台へ行ったら、いろいろな美しい山と海が見えます。私の一番好きな山は富合町の雁回山と、宇土市の白山です。

富合町と宇土市はとなりでし。昔話では、雁回山と白山は同じ所にありました。雁回山と白山に二人の鬼が住んでいました。白山の鬼と雁回山の鬼は口論のすえ、けんかをしました。山の鬼たちはお互いに大きな大石を投げ合ました。雁回山の鬼は負けたので、富合町の方に行きました。今でも、雁回山と白山の間に投げた大石が見られます。

雁回山の名前にも昔話があります。昔々、今から９００年前、一人の有名な侍が富合町に住んでいました。その男の名前は鎮西八郎為朝でした。鎮西八郎は弓道がとても上手でした。昔の言いつたえでは、彼の左手は右手より１０センチぐらい長かったそうです。それで、弓弦を普通より長く引けたので、矢の力は普通より強かったと言われています。面白い話の一つに保元の乱の時には鎮西八郎は平氏の船を一本の矢で沈めました。

鎮西八郎は富合町に住んでいた時にはよく「木原山」と言う山に行きました。山の頂上から弓矢で雁を射ました。弓道が上手だったので、たくさんの雁を殺しました。そこで、雁は雁回山の真上を飛ぶことをやめて、山の回りを飛んでいたので、山の名前は雁回山に成りました。今でも、雁回山の上には雁は見られません。

This article was written by my father for a local newspaper in Kentucky.

LAWRENCE B. SIMS, JR. – PRINCETON NATIVE AND WWII VETERAN

 On October 1, 1945, ten days before his 27^th birthday, Princeton native Lawrence B. Sims, Jr. was on his 50^th and final mission over the Hump.  Around 0900 hrs, after staying over in Kunming, China, the night before, and around two hours into the return flight to India, the number two engine on his four-engine C-54 caught fire, possibly from a broken fuel line. By the time Sims walked to the rear to strap on his parachute, the number two engine had fallen off.  Of the five crew members on board, including Flight Officer Sims, pilot, all but one bailed out safely.  Sims was the third out of the plane.  The co-pilot attempted to help a ground crew member unfamiliar with his parachute, with the plane descending rapidly, until the co-pilot had to jump.  Larry, as his fellow pilots called him, said the C-54 looked like a house on fire when it hit.  The fifth man, last seen struggling with his gear, presumably went down with the plane and was listed as missing in action.   The Hump was the name given to the Himalayas, and to the route flown by the Air Transport Command, as the US ferried supplies and fuel from eastern India, over Burma to the Chinese and Allied forces, whose supply lines were cut off by the Japanese.  Flight Officer Sims flew his four-engine Douglas C-54 Skymaster, modified for cargo from the civilian DC-4 airliner, out of Kurmitola (1345^th Base Unit), in what was India, then East Pakistan, and now Bangladesh. 

 The young Kentuckian was one of thousands of American servicemen stationed in one of the lesser-known war zones, the China-Burma-India Theater, or the CBI.  Clear weather over the highest mountains in the world was known as “Zero weather” to US pilots, for the Japanese fighter plane had a better view of his target.   The enemy’s targets, those C-54s, C-46s, C-47s, and C-87s, were literally flying gasoline stations, ferrying tons of fuel in 55-gallon drums for 500 miles or more from various bases in India to the isolated Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the men of the United States Army Air Forces operating in Lulaing, Kunming, and other areas of western China.  The Kurmitola air base of the 1940s, from where so much tonnage was transported over treacherous peaks and extreme weather conditions, and to where many wounded were brought back from “Chinaside,” is today the major international airport for Bangladesh, thirteen miles north of the capital of Dhaka.

 On October 11, 2010, Lawrence Sims, who graduated from Cobb High School, celebrated his 92^nd birthday at the home of his 89-year-old sister, Nancy Adams, on the Sims farm near Otter Pond.  The gathering included children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Lawrence, Nancy, and their sister Martha Rose Sims Tandy, who passed away on January 25, 1999.   Nancy’s husband, William F. Adams (1915-2001), was a Navy veteran of WWII.  Other veterans in the extended family include Larry Tandy – US Army, Jim Tandy – US Army, Rose Ann Tandy – US Air Force, Richard Sims – US Army, and Jonathan Sims – US Coast Guard.  Others in attendance were Rodney and Margaret (Tandy) Heaton, and their children and grandchildren Spencer, Draper, Tucker and wife Kayla, Kaden James and Max Bryant.  The family of Nancy Adams present included Bob and Jennifer (Adams) West, Mike and Roberta Adams, Sara, Blair, and Bennett Smyly, and grandchild Malorie Adams.  Gladys Irene Tune Sims (1921-2006), who Lawrence met while at Embry Field in Union City, Tennessee, became his bride in September of 1944.  He did not see his first child, Kaye, born July 22, 1945, until he returned home from the war six months later.

 Lawrence “Larry” Sims earned his flight instructor certification in May 1942, and continued his aviation career once discharged from the USAAF in 1946.  In September of 1946 he began Princeton Flying Service on the neighboring farm of co-owner Homer Mitchell, which Sims operated for three years with support from the GI Bill; he also resumed his pre-war help to his father Lawrence Sr. and his mother Leta Davis Sims on the family farm.  Larry became a civilian flight instructor in the early 1950s and continued with that occupation until 1960, first in Greenville, Mississippi, and later at Graham Air Base in Marianna, Florida, while the growing family resided in nearby Dothan, Alabama.  One of Sims’s students at Graham, Dick Arnold (who went on to a career as a pilot for the military and the FAA) wrote a reminiscence in 2007 for an aviation newsletter than referred to Flight Instructor Sims as “steely-eyed, calm, and quiet, someone with a lot of T-6 (training plane) time; we all really respected him, a quiet perfectionist.”   In 1960, Lawrence Bryant Sims, Jr. accepted a position with the Federal Aviation Administration in St. Louis, from which he retired in 1981. The parachute he used in the CBI theater was later made into a child’s dress for his first daughter Kaye by a neighbor, Mrs. Ray Martin.

Setsubun?

About half a month after arriving in Japan, I was invited by the father of one of my students to join him at a small festival in Tomiai.  The festival was held at Kiwara Fudouson, one of Japan’s four famous Fudousons, or Buddhist temples of the Vajrayana flavor.  The event was held on the third of February, a famous holiday in Japan called Setsubun.  This event is related to Setsubun, but has a few differences.

Upon arriving at the Fudouson, Mr. Hirae and I abandoned our shoes at the foot of the temple and climbed the stone steps to the entrance.  Inside the temple was one large dimly lit room with about forty people sitting on a floor of tatami.  In front of the murmuring crowd was a monk, steadily and simultaneously chanting, ringing a bell, and stoking a fire.  I sat down in the middle of the room with Mr. Hirae and his family.

After about 30 minutes of conversation, the room began to grow quiet as the chanting of the monk grew louder.  The robed spiritual leader ended his chanting in a flurry of flame and bell tolls, and then stood up to join several other monks that had appeared.  All of them were holding enormous books designed like giant fans with ancient text inscribed on their folds.  The monks went to each observer sitting on the tatami, and one by one slapped us on the back with their fan books, chanting incessantly and praying for our good health and fortune in the coming year.

Thoroughly cleansed, the monks retreated to the front of the room making way for children who had been born on the year’s star sign.  That year happened to be my star sign, the ox, but unluckily I was denied from being included in their work because I was too old.  The children began to throw mochi (i.e. cooked rice pounded in to a soft cake) in to the crowd, and suddenly I was wrestling grandmothers off of me as the entire crowd dove to retrieve these tasteless treats of questionable worth.  What I didn’t know is that buried within each one of these snacks were coins, and some even had vouches for prizes sitting on a table off to the side.  Eyeing a particularly large bottle of imoshoschu (sweet potato spirits) I joined the fray and crammed as many rice balls in to my pocket as would fit.

Of course, by the end of it, despite the half dozen or so nuggets I had wrestled away from the elderly, not a single one had anything in it.  As I stood silently lamenting, however, the youngest daughter of my friend handed me a little piece of paper, good for one bottle of imo-shochu.  It was a good night.

The festival will take place again in a few days.  I think I’ll bring bigger pockets.

節分？

熊本に来た半年後ぐらいに平江さんと一緒に来原不動尊へ行きました。その日は二月三日でしたから節分の日でしたが、この行事とはちょっと違います。

不動尊に着いたら、靴を脱いで、中に入りました。四十人ぐらいは見に来ました。一番前でお坊さんが火を消さないようにしながら、お経を唱えていました。私は部屋の真ん中に平江さんと座りました。

その後三十分ぐらいたつと見に来た人は静かになりました。お坊さんたちは古くて大きな本を持っていて、その本で一人ずつ来たの人の腰を叩きまして。なぜなら、お坊さんから叩いてもらうと、一年間幸せでいられるからです。

その後で、丑年生まれの子供は餅をみんなに投げました。餅の中にお金や他の商品が入いていました。私は何も取れなかったですが、友達の五歳の娘はもらった焼酎の商品券を私にくれました。

I’ve never been much for birding, but go on enough hikes with a birder and anyone is bound to appreciate the beauty of it.  I was walking through Tatsuda (立田) park with a bespectacled binoculared birdbrain talking about the virtues of Japanese oranges when the conversation was suddenly interrupted by a torrent of chirps from the trees to our right.  Like a gun from a sling my friend whipped out his nocs and took aim at the trees, hissing for the party to be silent.  He had spotted an owl, which is a rare thing anywhere during the day, but especially in the middle of a city park in Japan.

He handed me the binoculars and after a few moments of anxious searching I spotted a silhouette on a branch and raised them to my eyes.  It was a barn owl, the black and brown plumage of its back turned toward me.  My friend gave a few choice whistles and like a spotlight on a swivel the bird’s white face turned to look me straight in the eye.  It was incredibly beautiful.

The whole day had been beautiful.  Apart from owls, Tatsuda park also has an abandoned science laboratory with a rusty radio tower climbing over the tree line that provides an amazing view of the sun setting over the Ariake sea, casting a pink-orange glow over southern Kumamoto and crowning the near-perfect cone of Nagasaki’s volcanic Mt. Unzen.

After our hike the four of us sat in a concert hall watching a piano accompaniment concert performed by graduate and undergraduate students at Kumamoto University.  The two pieces that struck me the most were piano performances featuring Brahms and Chopin.

How could the day get any better?  Lady Gaga and thirteen plates of good sushi.