Among the things we thought we'd like to find during our Tokyo visit was the grave site of Loduska J. Wirick. And, amazingly, we did!

Ms Wirick (1856-1914) was known as the 'Nightingale of the Orient'. We were interested in her because she is J's great grandmother's cousin.

According to a Web site on Christian Church history ,

Belle Bennett, daughter of missionaries serving in Australia, died in a boating accident in the Des Moines river the day before she was to go to Japan as a missionary. This was 1889. The students of Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, raised $4000 in her memory and asked for a missionary volunteer to go in Miss Bennett's place. Loduska J. Wirick answered that call. She came to Japan in the summer of 1890. She served nobly in Japan, particularly in her service to many Japanese soldiers wounded in the war with Russia and brought back to Japan for treatment. For this work she became known as the 'Nightingale of the Orient.' She was on furlough in Iowa when an examination at the Mayo Clinic revealed she had cancer. She immediately said good-bye to her aging mother and returned to Japan to finish up her work and die here-- April 30, 1914. Her grave has an unusual gravestone - a pulpit with an open Bible resting on it with the inscription from Hebrews 11:4, 'Being dead - yet speaketh.' She is buried in Somei Cemetery, Toshima-ku, in northern Tokyo.

Somei is an enormous cemetery with a whole Web site devoted to the famous people resting there. Finding and getting to Somei was no problem, but finding her grave was. Where to look? As happens frequently in Japan, a man stopped to ask if he could help. He directed us to the foreign section of the cemetery, and we found the grave immediately.

News & Notes

• We were guests at a dinner party hosted by Henri Angelino, one of L's NII faculty colleagues, and Yuko Sasaki. She's Japanese, he's French -- having stayed on after his tour at the French Embassy -- and the guest list couldn't have been more diverse if the party were held at the UN. The cook, happily, was Thai.

• As we were arriving in Tokyo, Dan and Tomoko sent us a handmade phrase book they created to help us get along in Japan. It was a 40th Anniversary gift, and extremely thoughtful.

  

  Alas, their creativity got the best of them! The sorts of phrases they thought to include were:
  
  Watashi wa ohiru gohan no ueni tatteimasu: "I am standing on my lunch"
  
  We're happy we know how to say that, but so far we haven't had much opportunity to use it.

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• We joined Michael Houle (Canadian) and his boys, Casey (6) and Hugo (4), and Vincent Oria (Ivory Coast native & Canadian permanent resident) at a hockey game between the Seibu Prince Rabbits (formerly the Seibu Bunnies) and the Shanghai Sharks. Seibu is Tokyo's team in Asia League Ice Hockey, which is not your standard NHL: There were cheerleaders, no beer, no fighting, oolong tea (apparently in deference to Shanghai), and a Zamboni made by some company called Olympic. Post game, the Rabbits stayed on the ice and invited the kids to come out and practice their slap shots! Also, check out Cool Stuff.

  

  Second period action as the Seibu Rabbits beat the Shanghai Sharks 3-1

• This is not strictly news, but something we want to comment on as we leave Tokyo.
  
  Any time spent in another country creates an impression based on thousands of small, inconsequential experiences. Like the man in the cemetery mentioned above, the experiences affect how we think of the place. Japan -- Tokyo specifically -- has been especially welcoming. In tribute to all those brave Japanese who willingly risked making English mistakes to include us in their world, we'd like to describe one representative interaction we had on a back street near the Tsukiji Fish Market.
  
  We don't know their names, but these people own this "shaved bonito" business. It's dried fish shaved paper-thin and used commonly as a condiment on Japanese foods. They had set up this display of old photographs in front of their shop as a small 70th anniversary celebration of the business. The woman explained that the baby in the large photo is her mother. The man brought us cups of warm fish tea (daishi). Our conversation focused on the sites in the photos, including a comparison of the business then and now. (It seemed to us nearly unchanged.) There was nothing important about the encounter, but we very much enjoyed the time. They were very proud of their family and business, and we were, too.

  

  Celebrating near Tsukiji Market

• We will be out of contact -- electronic and otherwise -- for three or more weeks. We're leaving Tokyo for Singapore by the freighter MV Hanjin Ottawa. We'll develop a page on board, and launch it when we get back online. Hasta la vista!

  

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