Posted by peter on July 04, 1997 at 07:54:06:
Well here goes for a second attempt
I arrived in Japan on the 22nd and met two members of the Arthur Ransome Club on Thursday the 26th of June: Satoshi "Observatory" Tarashima and Mikako "Minnow" Yamada. They took me to a restaurant in Shinjuku, a sort of Tkyo Kings Cross, where we had Okonomiyaki, do-it-yourself pancakes cooked by the customer on a very hot iron table. We toasted Swallows and Amazons Forever in English and then Tsubamego to Amazongo Banzai, the Japanese equivalent. It is interesting to note that this means "Swallow and Amazon for ever", that is, a salute to the two ships, not to their respective crews [the Swallows and the Amazons].
We retired to Observatory-san's apartment and enjoyed a heated literary discussion.
The second meeting was held on Sunday 29. June [on the same day as the Comemmorative service at Rusland] at the house of ARC member Tomoko "North Pole" Yakawa. This was a feast of delicacies mentioned in the saga: we had parkins, rock cakes, bath buns, squashed squashed fly biscuits [squashed doubly in my baggage coming from Australia] two Malay curries, one of which contained boiled eggs as a result of a misunderstanding of the term "curried eggs". There were about 15 people present. I was presented with a couple of welcoming gifts, including a Japanese traditional game of skill, a tsubame-gaeshi, or "flying swallow" which involves flipping a wooden sphere into spoon-like depressions on a handle. The youngest ARC member present, Makoto-san, is some sort of champion and demonstrated many amazing tricks to the delight of all present. He has thus earned the nickname Tsubame-Gaeshi, Flying Swallow, a anme any AR reader can be proud of.
After the feast we walked to the Tamagawa, a large river which flows from the mountains through Tokyo to the bay of Tokyo-wan at about Haneda airport. We sang Spanish Ladies and [in 2 languages] Drunken Sailor, then I sang The Ransome Shanty [by pauline Marshall]. We toasted Swallow and Amazon again with a bottle of red wine and a very loud "Banzai!!" and then saw each other off at the station.
The next meeting will be held on the same river: a boating expedition at a boats-for-hire place where a weir forms a little lake. I have resolved to try sailing there if i can get hold of a little boat.