This year has turned out to be another busy year. Tsuchino and I are serving on the board of directors of two organizations. The Seattle Japanese Language School and Japanese Community Services of Seattle. Both organizations keep us busy.
Tsuchino is working with a couple of other Japanese ladies to start a Japanese language lending library. They have collected over 3500 books written in Japanese and the language school has given them a classroom to house the library.
We did have time to go on a bus trip to Portland and Mount St. Helens with Fukuoka Ken Jin Kai. This is a group of people who are from the same are of Japan as Tsuchino. Pictures taken during this trip are here.
The high point of every year is the Japanese festival of Bon Odori. This is a summer festival in celebration of our ancestors. The high point is the Japanese folk dances that everyone participates in. I go to dance practice every year at the Seattle Buddhist Church. Here are some pictures of the While River Buddhist Church’s festival.
I got quite a scare in September. Tsuchino woke me up at about 2 am in the morning and said she felt like her shoulders were heavy. I gave her a nitroglycerin pill and in about 3 minutes the problem went away. This indicated that she need to get to the hospital and get checked. I took her to Group Health’s Emergency room and she was examined by a nice young woman doctor. All the test were negative for heart problems, but the doctor told me that women were almost always under diagnosed for heart problems and she wanted to keep Tsuchino in the hospital and have a cardiologist see her in the morning. To make a long story short, if the doctor had not kept Tsuchino in the hospital I am convinced I would have lost her. It turned out that she had over a 90% blockage in the main artery of her heart. They did an angioplasty and put a stent in her heart. Three weeks later we went to Hawaii.
Out trip to Hawaii was for a convention of the Japanese International Marriage Society. We went a week early and toured the Big Island of Hawaii and the island of Kauai. Tsuchino’s younger sister Miyako along with Miyako’s brother in law and his wife joined us. Here is a link to some pictures.
At the start of September our niece Miwako and her husband Matt stopped by on their way to Ohio to visit Matt’s parents. Miwako and Matt had a baby a few months ago and they are taking him to meet his grandparents. After their vacation they will be transferring to Okinawa. Some pictures of Andrew are here.
Click here for our 2004 Christmas letter.
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