Nobuko

Nobuko sent this picture along with her package of yummy crisps and cookies from Japan.  I think it's very cute and happy.  The warm smile as she waves to the camera.  Though it's hard sometimes to communicate with her, I am so fortunate to have her in my life.

I think the picture was taken at Ai Ai, the center for autistic children and adults that she runs.

Greetings from Yamagata City!

Photoessay #2807 - Nobuko again

Another picture of Nobuko taken during Naomi's visit.  I recognize the place; the garden behind the temple that Nobuko's family.  And the place, right by the entrance where Nobuko's family has their stone.  Her husband's ashes (Tadeshia) are there.  He died of esophageal cancer at age 60.  He smoked heavily like many Japanese.  We met him when they came to visit us in 2002.  I'm sure, I have a picture.

Nobuko is right there but it is so hard to communicate with her.  She spent a year in American at age 18 so her spoken English comes back to her easily.  Writing not so much.  Email also not so much.  So, there she is.  So grateful to her for hosting Naomi and Jackie for a few days last month.

I had pointed out that Japanese institutions are not always visible on the web.  For example, you cannot find anything on her center tor autistic children and adults, Ai Ai.  But it's a good size legitimate center in Yamagata, a provincial city.

A shout out to Nobuko, we love you!

Photoessay #2794 - Naomi visits Nobuko

Naomi made it to Yamagata to visit Nobuko!  Yay!  All of these places and people seem so far apart, so many time zones, countries, and languages.  Hard to imagine that they can all come together, but they do.

Nobuko was an exchange student in my family's home in 1968.  She was a few years older than I and very eager to take advantage of this opportunity.  I was 16 and generally snarky to everybody.  At that time, Japan seemed impossibly far away.  She came and visited my parents and me about 10 years ago.  Dennis and I went to visit her in 2010.  And now Naomi!

Yamagata City is a provincial city a four hour bullet train ride north of Tokyo.  In the mountains; Yama means mountain.  A prefecture capital, it has a university and a city center, temples and shrines.  And manageable.  Especially if you have Nobuko.  On our trip, we also visited Kyoto and Tokyo but I thought Yamagata was the most interesting.

Many thanks to Nobuko.  Being immersed in English at age 18, spoken English usually comes back to her.  She always worries that her English will not be good enough but she does just fine.  Her house is somewhat unusual; a bit more western than her peers.  Her father had had a small hospital on that site.  She and her husband Tadeshi(now passed away) built a new house.  He had studied in East Germany so they both wanted to incoporate some western style living spaces.

Nobuko's daughter Natsuko was also an exchange student in the US in high school and she spent two weeks with us shortly before our trip to Japan.  It just worked out that way!

A picture from Jackie's facebook; there they are together in Nobuko's living room.

Photoessay #2009 - Gifts

Here are the gifts that we will be bringing to Japan. I understand that gifts are very important when visiting in Japan. So I hope we have it covered

The centerpiece is the silver candy dish which belonged to my mother. When I first started talking about this trip, my sister asked my mom if she wanted for Nobuko to have a piece of her silver. My mom thought this was a grand idea. She passed before we could really figure it out. I picked out this piece as it seemed more streamlined. I really don't know if it's sterling or silver plate. Guess it doesn't matter.

The other are food items, a 1 lb (Natsuko) and a 2 lb (Nobuko) box of the old standby See's Candy. My family has really wanted to get their hands on these (myself included). And some Blue Cottage jam. I didn't make it until May, I had to get some special. I introduced in to Natsuko when she was here and she really loved it. The Blue Cottage Jam lady was thrilled that her jam was going to Japan. Must take some pictures to show her.

The shined up the silver dish (as shown) and purchased a brand new gift bag with new tissue paper. I had some in the garage but they kind of looked like they had been in the garage. I will need to wrap the other items.

So readers, do you think this is good enough?

Off to Pullman tomorrow for Mom's Weekend. Big even at WSU.

Photoessay #936 - Back to Ginsburgh Family blog

I haven't updated the Ginsburgh family blog since March so time to get back on it. After such a long break, it's hard to remember where everything is; I think it's all still here.

Some background. Shortly after my father's death in 2007, I liberated my family's slide collection. I brought the boxes of slides home along with the slide projector. I subsequently went through all the slides from 1961 to the mid 1970s and selected some from each box to work on. I decided to send the slides to a service in Portland (Pixmonix) to digitize them and put them on a CD. I highly recommend them. I created a blog Ginsburgh Family Pix to post them and to write about what I knew of the image. The idea was that other family members could look at the picture and fill in other details and possibly their memory of the occassion.

I fizzled out around 1968 mainly because, increasingly, I'm not in the pictures and hardly at all after 1970, when I set out for college on my own...my own odyssey, thank you very much and I ain't NEFER coming back. So much for self-centeredness.

This shot shows Nobuko (our exchange student, who I hope to be talking more about in the near future) jumping off the high dive at the swimming pool of my high school, Rio Americano, in suburban Sacramento, California in 1968. It was a big deal to get up the nerve to try it. That's the beauty of the exchange student phenomena, do you have the nerve to take a risk to do something completely new? I didn't have it.

Photoessay #459 - Restart and Nobuko

A year or so ago, I liberated my parents slide collection and started working with them, I had quite a few digitized. I started another blog featuring them. The idea would be to put the pictures up with a small explanation. The audience would be my own family, I was encouraging them to enter their own comments and memories about the snapshots. I did it for awhile, then lost interest. But I'm back!

The period starts in 1961 extends into the mid 1970s. I got bogged down in that all important year of 1968 (I was 16). A good year to be 16, actually.

At that time, middle class American families took slides. I'm not sure what the attraction was because they were hidden away in little boxes and it was quite a production to find and see them. I have a sensory memory of anticipation and a stuffy dark room with a certain smell of the warmed up film, the sound of the fan on the projector, the clickety clack of slide tray going back and forth. And children were not to operate this, not too touch, no.

But today, I'm digging them out and starting again. I will feature this picture here and on my Ginsburgh Family Blog site. I lost interest last May.

Picture, taken in front of our Wilhaggin house in Sacramento. Nobuko, our exchange student, and myself are in our matching outfits. Hey, we thought they were cute, culottes in bright colors with their oversize ties. Summer given the short sleeves and sandals. Charlie, age 14, did not have his growth spurt yet. Pam, looking peppy and cute, as usual. I do not know where we were going.

Nobuko was our exchange student. At the time, I cooperated somewhat grudgingly, I was too full of my own teenage angst. She came and visited a few years ago with our husband and I enjoyed her SO much. I didn't appreciate her back in the day. Her husband came, I think I posted some pictures. He's since passed away. Nobuko has been very active with education of autistic and other special needs children. She has two children. Every year, she sends us a delightful box at xmas time. I just wrote her back.