Yokohama Navy Exchange was where?

Bunraku puppets were also used by the Met Opera in a new production of "Madame Butterfly", which was recently broadcast live all over the world in HD - I hear it was spectacular. The puppets were lovely. The toddler in the story, who is always impossible to cast with an appropriately aged live child, was done as a puppet - really wonderful idea.

Barbara-san: The Bluff Yo-Hi: http://yohidevils.net/schools/bluff.htm I have no recollection of that building but I do remember the Japanese girl's high school down the street.
I don't know anything about the tennis court that is now where your house was. Someone currently in Yokohama may be able to find out something about it. There is a park, the Yamate Italian Hill Garden, where my house was but none of the buildings there today were there in 1954.
The upperclassmen on our bus were not bossy, you were all awesome! All of us seventh graders hoped that we too would someday be as mature and grown-up as all of you were.
Steffi-san: I can't find any record of Ann Pendleton. Camp Pendleton is a large Marine Corps base named after a Marine Corps general who was prominent between the world wars. I spent some time there. Great place to get exercise and fresh air.
Dave-san

I've been away from the thread for a while, so I just got caught up. A lot can happen in a short while!
It has been so wet here on the Cape that when I went to weed in one of our gardens that's pretty low, I sank up to my ankles. Long live the weeds!
I finally got my own copy of "Japanese Inn" and I have to say that I really love it. It gives a picture of real people, living real lives, and it's not just a political and military history. I would love to stay at the Minaguchi-ya, but somehow I don't think the Tokaido is quite the same as it was when the book was published.
When I'm done with this post I'm going to order the John Dower book from the library.
Steffi -- thank you so much for pointing us to page 41 for your story, I had a feeling it was there somewhere, but I wasn't sure I was going to take the time to read everything!
We had fireworks over the bay, as we've had for many years, and I'm told they were the best ever. Our band put on an hour long show at Mashpee High School that night, so I went to that and missed the fireworks. What I didn't miss was the 45 minute wait after I got back into town, before the roads were opened to two way traffic and I could actually get home.
Hooray -- Youk just scored and it's 4 - 0, Boston.

In an earlier post someone had commented that there was little or no crime in Japan at the time that we were there. We were part of the "little" as opposed to the no. My mother heard a door slamming and thought she'd forgotten to lock it, so went downstairs, just as theives were taking off with all our coats and my father's wallet and his new camera. They dropped the coats in the playground out back, but Dad never recovered his pay or his camera. I remember that it was raining that day, and according to a letter that my mother wrote home, the Japanese police were disgusted with the MPs for bringing our coats in and disturbing the crime scene.
Now to order the next book on Japan.

I made a mistake in my reference to the puppet theater I saw as a youngster in rural Japan.
The correct reference should have been "kami-shibai" or paper theater.
General MacArthur used kami-shibai to introduce the idea of constitutional government and other changes to the Japanese. There is a picture of this on page 393 of John Dower's book.

Thanks, Dave, for your research on Ann Pendleton. Welcome back, Sr Catherine. Sunny beautiful almost summery day here in the Berkshires. We're about to have a town meeting tomorrow morning - the Zebra Mussel has arrived in a local lake, and ways to hopefully keep this menace out of our own lake will be discussed - scary environmental disaster - a foreign species, from eastern Europd. Does anyone have any special knowledge, suggestions, or comments about this problem? Hope everyone's well.

this might be redundant site, but this brought up my memories.
www.photoclip.net/travel/hotels/blog/2007/11/03/honmoku-yokohama-1982-nagai-heights-1985/

Steffi: I googled zebra+mussle+invasion and it looks like you can find out quite a bit about it. (I didn't explore any of the websites myself.)

I have just googled for information about the zebra mussels. Wow! It's an environmental disaster that's apparently now hit our area. Not sure yet if it's in our lake, but it's now in Massachusetts for the first time. Apparently they're all over the country, but it looks like you're lucky in that they can't live in the northwestern bodies of water.
For those who might be interested, the following gives a pretty thorough summary of the problem -

http://www.iowadnr.gov/fish/news/exotics/zebra.html#wha...

Today's Minneapolis Star Tribune 7/14/09 has a story on this issue. The mussels breed like mad, clog water intakes and have sharp edges that can cut swimmers' feet. About the only thing that will destroy them is the common drum fish. Ducks will consume them if they're in the shallows.
Ducks my dad brought home from duck hunting in Japan were always full of clams and tasted a little fishy...

I just read the article in your paper. It sounds like the zebra hasn't yet hit your area, which is good. But it also seems the legislature isn't doing much to prevent an infestation, which is terrible. The same is true here in Massachusetts, unfortunately. We are surrounded by states that already have had the problem for a dozen years but nothing has been done in this state regarding prevention, even though we have calcium-rich water, which is what the little monsters need to develop, and recreational as opposed to commercial lakes, which could have had preventive measures in place without harming anyone's livelihood long before they actually hit us. A terrible tragedy in the making.

A few more facts: zebra mussels have no serious predators in this country, though they are eaten by a few ducks and fish; they remove plankton and other nutrients as well as oxygen from the water, causing fish and other mussels to die off; they eventually totally cover anything solid they come close to, such as docks, boat bottoms, rocks, other mussels, beaches; they clean the water, which sounds like a good thing, especially for swimmers, but isn't since this allows more sunlight to reach noxious weeds like milfoil which then proliferate in deeper water; their larvae are microscopic, so that even if the adults can be killed or at least cleaned off a boat by power washing with hot water and bleach, the eggs may still be on life vests, ropes, wet areas on the boat, fishing gear, or diving equipment, and spread to other waters if this equipment is then used there. The adults die after 3 or 4 years, after which they clog up beaches and give the area a sewer-like smell. Your lake is safe if it is low in calcium, meaning if you are west of the lime deposits that are prevalent in our areas of the country, and if you succeed in keeping out contaminated boats.

The zebras first landed in the Great Lakes area in 1988, brought over from Europe by ships who dumped their contaminated ballast water there. They have since spread down the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers, and affected fresh waterways far and wide. They can be barely noticed one year, and be everywhere the next.

So, Eric, hopefully our respective governments will take stronger measures to protect our areas before it's too late.

Steffi, I occasionally visit Amherst. Do you know if the beautiful Quabbin Reservoir has been affected by the zebra mussel invasion? What a tragedy that would be! Do you know the story of the Quabbin Reservoir? The reservoir is huge (18 miles long with double the storage capacity of Lake Erie), created in 1938 as a source of water to be pumped 67 miles east to Boston.  It required the 'taking' and deliberate drowning of several villages, now at the bottom of the reservoir.  Recreational activities are not permitted; it is a pristine wildlife sanctuary, lovely to look at for as far as the eye can see.  Jane Yolen wrote a beautiful children's book about it called Letting the Swift River Go.  I found it in a used book store years ago, long before I started visiting Amherst or knew that Quabbin Reservoir was nearby. If you or others in that area haven't been there, it's worth a visit.

What I have read is that Laurel Lake, here in the Berkshires, is the first body of fresh water in Massachusetts where zebra mussels have been seen, and this just happened last week. I guess because Quabbin is a reservoir special precautions were taken to keep it safe. The same was done in the reservoirs north of NYC that provide water for the city - boats there have to be certified, licenced, etc before they can enter, and only small kayaks and canoes are allowed. Also, I read that the authorities were ready to chlorinate these revervoirs in the early 90's if necessary to keep them free of these mussels, but that has not been done so far. The question is why the same precautions - limiting boating, or making sure the boats entering were clean of these mussels - weren't taken to protect the recreational lakes around NYS, MA, Vermont, and elsewhere.

I was trying to figure out how zebras, which thrive and breed in fresh water, were contained and controlled in their original habitats, which were the Black and Caspian seas. I think the answer seems to be the saltiness of the water there. These seas are salty for the most part, but have areas apparently that contain fresh water, which is where the zebras lived. So I think the numbers of zebras there are contained by the saltiness of their environment. But when they get into fresh water, they can breed uncontrolled, and have no serious predators that can control their numbers, so that is what makes them dangerous.

Here is today's article in the Berkshire Eagle - unfortunately, an example of Mass authorities not taking this problem seriously enough to protect our lakes.

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_12847889

The zebras are in Lake of the Ozarks and have also reached into the southwest Missouri lake system on the White River into Arkansas.
There is an intensive effort now underway in Minnesota by at least two labs, working on a way to interrupt the zebra life cycle. When these things multiply, there is a four to eight hour period when the male and female contributions to the next brood are free floating and thus could be hit with a chemical or other solution.
The first guy to solve this issue will do pretty well...

Glad to hear about the Minn research - that's the first good news I've heard - let's hope they succeed. The western Europeans have been having this problems for over 200 years and have not solved the issue. Sorry it has reached Missouri. I read someplace that zebras breed when the water's above 55 degrees and are dormant during winters.

I hate to bring this up - but there's another mussel - the Quagga mussel - another equally destructive invasive species, that lives in water of all temperatures, and can breed even in cold water that's even more dangerous.

I've been following the Zebra Mussel discussion with a sense of Déjà vu. Last year the northern snakehead, also called the Frankenfish, was going to eat everything else in the Potomac . Haven't heard much about it lately. When I was a teenager, the Lamprey Eel was going to do the same thing. I don't hear much about them anymore either. Somehow we always seem to survive new species and adapt to change.
Here's a great site. http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/ Enjoy!
Dave-san

I wrote deja vu with accents over the e and a and the forum changed it to Japanese. I guess I'd better stick with the King's English.
Dave-san

Thank you for the wonderful interesting site - you are truly the master of the internet. And for the encouraging outlook - I do hope you're right.

Its a little hard to believe but it was 40 years ago today that we climbed Mt Fuji to arrive at the summit at dawn. It was a lot colder than we had expected and we then huddled in a semi open shack with some other Americans, one guy had a small "new" transistor raido, and was listening intently to it. Then he said.. "here it comes here it comes".. I was not quite sure what was going on, so he held it out for the little group of us to hear... Tranquility base here.. The eagle has landed".. for one second I thought, what eagle? then it all dawned on me.. oh my god.. were on the moon ! We whooped it up and would have given hi-fives [except that nowbody did that then]. The Japanese all looked at us as if we were crazy. I pulled out my dictionary and did a rough translation and announced it to the crowd. Some polite smiles and bows, one Japanese man thanked me in english [ as if I had anything to do with it]. Later we came down the mountain and about 5 hours later we were back in Yokohama at out little apartment for the "first steps".
What a magic time.. and today as I look accross the living room, there in the corner, is the Fuji climbing pole that I had on that day. Wood does darken with age.. but not memories. I wonder what each of us here was doing then ? Especially my friend Wally.. if he still follows this. Best to all.. thanks for the re-indulgence.

I climbed Fuji with the Boy Scouts in the summer of 53 when I was twelve. Nothing else special happened that day. I do recall looking down into the crater and thinking there wasn't much to see.
Forty years ago today I listened to the moon landing in my boat in the middle of Beaufort Bay in South Carolina. I hadn't planned to listen because I hadn't been aware it would be broadcast but luckily the fish weren't biting so I turned on the radio looking for some music and got the moon landing instead.
Dave-san