Friday, March 15, 2019

Sensei’s birthday lunch/Carlos Pueblo


Sensei’s birthday lunch/Carlos Pueblo

Thursday after class, we invited Nagamoto Sensei and Auksan Datsuko to
Agu Rawmen Restaurant to celebrate his 77 years birthday. Many of us in
the class attended the lunch and we had a good time. In Taiwan, we as students
always like to have something to appreciate our teachers at graduation in
college or above and we believe that is a good tradition to appreciate teacher’s
effort. We also invite his wife and she comes to the class to give us some
lesson and also witness our progress. We, everyone in the class, can introduce
ourselves in Japanese about name, nationality, job, like and dislike, age, telephone
number, and current residency, etc. Everyone is doing very well indeed.

I bring in all my souvenir from my trips to Japan to the class; however, I don’t have
time to show to the entire class. I have visited many of the large cities in four major
islands of Japan. One of the brochure get their attention. It was the old frame
residence of Doi Bansui, the poet, who was with the song writer, Taki Rentaro, on
their famous piece, the moon over a ruined castle. We don’t have very much time
to discuss in details yet I promise them to give them my translation work based on
my previous Japanese Sensei, Daniel Watanabe, his English translation. The frame
house is now a museum of Doi in downtown Sendai, Japan.   

Because of their academic background, I also mention another famous writer,
Soseiki Natsumei. His picture is shown on Japanese 1000 Yen. Mrs. Naga moto checked
her i-phone immediately to verify his birth place, Tokyo, and we are aware of his Tokyo
Imperial University educational background. After his graduation from the University,
he went to teach English at Kumamoto’s 5th Senior High, then back to the University.
He is an English scholar and also very good at Chinese Classic Literature, Haiku and
Renku in Japanese poem. He is most famous as a novelist in Japan. I believe that we
have had several of his books in our family book cabinet. It is a long story during the
end of the War. A Japanese left some of his collection to my father.

That collection was also included a small rugby bronze medal. I studied an article about
Eaton and Rugby schools at my senior high school English textbook and later, I even made
separate trips to visit both campuses. Eaton is nearby the Winsor Castle while Rugby town
is not far from Birmingham. Both schools are now very famous private schools among the
British Commonwealth Nations.

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