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.
