Tom, Jennifer, Yoshiko, Yoshi, Yoshimi, Yoshina and I all went together driving down the scenic highway to Homer, Alaska. We stayed at a motel called the Land's End built on the tip of a long sand spit protruding into the Kachemack Bay (see the top picture, Jennifer, yoshi and yoshimi on the beach right outside the inn).
Yoshi didn't waste his time catching one. Here he is with his catch for the day. But with all fairness, his dad also caught one and came home to tell his friends a story.
Here is my catch, fat fall Alaska silver salmon! The picture was taken just after the fishing trip at the boat owner's ledge on the river bank. Kenai river originates from a large glacier system way back in the mountain ranges and flows down through much of the Kenai peninsula before pouring out into the bay.
We also went for wild rainbow trout fishing in Finger Lake on Tom's own boat. The beautiful sunset picture to the right was taken on our way home.
This time of the year, it often rains in Alaska and one can see beautiful rainbows across the sky. This picture was taken in the backyard of Tom's new Anchorage home one morning after evening rain.
During our fishing trip, we made various interesting stops for food and recreation.
Behind Tom and Jennifer, you can see the face of the glacier across the bay embraced by rocky mountains (center). Yoshiko and Yoshi stood at an old mountain lodge-restaurant door with a big hand-curved moose on it.(left)
Kids got together at Tom's new home to visit with me one day (left). They are, from left to right and back to front, Yoshi, Yoshiko, Takeshi, Yoshimi, and Yoshina.
Takeshi, David's only son, joined us on the trout fishing trip to Finger Lake. When we checked Tom's boat, we found out we had to do a lot of maintenance jobs before putting it in the water. Yoshi and Takeshi were playing around us (right) while we spent sometime getting the boat ready.
One evening, Yoshimi wanted to show me her new fancy night wear. So Yoshiko dressed her up and posed for me. We are hoping that one day during the holiday seasons all of us can get together in the U.S. or somewhere in Japan.
But, as the Okamoto family grows bigger each year, it seems further away from being an actual possibility. Such being the way of life, here is the latest addition to the extended Okamoto family, Yoshina, just born this spring as the youngest member of Tom's family. I was struck by the fact that Yoshina reminded me at my first glance of my feminine kins back in Japan including her hair sticking up in the center like a Billiken.
During my stay in Portland, Oregon, David drove me out one fine afternoon, to Canon Beach, a well-known quaint old seaside resort of the northern coast directly facing the Pacific ocean.
There it was! What a difference between the ocean I had been so used to watch off the coasts of frigid Alaska and this placid blue horizon of the temperate zone of the same Pacific ocean. You can see misty fog moving in from the ocean. But it is floating high up in the air while it crawls low down on the water surface in Alaska.
A small river runs into the sea on this beach, a good-looking stream for salmon and trout fishing, but I was told by local residents that there hardly was good fishing any more around there. Well. A well-known beach. There it is. We must really start thinking more about what we have done to our environment even in a state like Oregon, which is nationally known for the beauty of its nature.
The Japanese garden was exquisitely appointed and looked perfectly authentic Japanese. However, upon close checking, I found out that the lumber used for the wood construction was all from the local conifer materials from the Pacific Northwest. It was indeed a dextrous hybrid of East and West.
[DAVID'S WORKSHOP WHERE I DID MY WORK WITH HIM]
During my stay with David in Portland, I lived in his workshop behind the garage where he and I spent time together getting things done. For one thing, it was fun that we could exchange a lot of info on computer business in the U.S. and Japan. Somehow, we agreed we will try to do things in such a way that we can help each other on the Internet by creating niche business we can exploit in both countries through computer-networking.
The water circulation-filtering system of the gold fish pond (out front beyond the white deck) broke down causing the water to leak out into the drainage. Alarmed by the plight of the fish paddling around the shallow water, she frantically tried to contact me in the U.S. finally catching me just before boarding a river fishing boat in Kenai, Alaska. I wouldn't tell you how much all the telephone calls cost us.
A SHORT HISTORY:Toyotaro Okamoto (compare with his living son Yutaka Okamoto in color!) was born in the latter part of the 1880s in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture in Japan. His family had long been the licensed merchant house of the Izumo Han which was a lord domain of a Matsudaira family clan, a close kin of the Tokugawa family, the feudal ruler of Japan.
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, at which time Japan embarked upon a concerted drive for total modernization, the Matsudaira family's fortune plummeted because of the abolishment of the feudal domains system, and as a result, the Okamoto family also lost the major customer of its business. Toyotaro, thus, came to Osaka City, Japan's new commercial center, and made a fortune out of sheer guts and personal effort. He spent his own money to buy up and rebuild a residential part of the old lord's castle and made it into his private summer house (see the pictures below).
He loved amateur dramatics, especially the traditional Japanese samurai dramas, and this is one precious picture left behind of his private performance (right).
His summer house was an almost exact reconstruction of the feudal-age samurai residence with an elaborate tea house (left). and a spacious garden designed to reproduce the classical beauty of a Japanese garden (last two pictures).
To the left is the view of the garden from one extreme end, with some structures in the background. The entire ground surface is covered with a thick layer of white pebbles dotted by stepping stones.
To the right is the view of the garden as looked at from the living room of the house located on the right-hand side of the previous picture.
TO BE CONTINUED