Shizuoka
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Our reason for stopping in Shizuoka for one night on our way from Hiroshima to Tokyo was to see my former (two-year) roommate from Phillips Exeter, Richard Cleaver.  We had not seen each other since we were freshmen in college in the Fall of 1970.  For a number of years now Richard has been teaching  English at a Women's Junior College in Shizuoka.  Richard taught us so much that we learned about Japan on this trip that it is hard to imagine that we had already been in the country for two weeks when we saw him.

Shizuoka is famous for its green tea, and I guess for its views of Mount Fuji in clear weather.  Unfortunately it was overcast and rainy when we were there.  In the brief time that we were there Shizuoka seemed like a very nice place to live.  Of course for us the best thing about Shizuoka was that we had a friend there who spoke Japanese! 

After unpacking and taking photographs for the Alumni magazine, Richard took us to lunch and introduced us to the various "Don" dishes, such as Oyakodon and Katsudon.  These became Tony's favorite Japanese food (and something I would like to find at a Japanese restaurant in Boston). 

We then went to an internet cafe, where we purchased internet access time through a Japanese windows machine, and received orange juice and coffee.  This was our first chance to check email and the web (including the stock market) since we had been in Japan (we had seen an internet cafe in Kyoto but hadn't bothered to go there).  I don't remember how much we paid for all this but I remember thinking it was quite expensive (probably about $25).  Click HERE to see three of the messages that Tony and I wrote home to his mother (preserved now for all time on this website). 

That restaurant we went to a Shabu Shabu restaurant.  Shabu Shabu is kind of a like a Japanese fondue (though I read online that it only recently came to Japan from China originally).  Paper thin slices of beef are boiled on a pot on your table.  As the water becomes greasy with beef fat you also boil various vegetables, eventually you finish the meal with rich broth.  We got the all-you-can-eat high-end expensive beef special (and I have been gaining weight ever since).

The next morning we watched the 1999 Baseball All-Star Game, live from Fenway park.  We were able to watch this in either Japanese or English (thanks to the dual-language television in our hotel room), and managed to see Pedro Martinez strike out 5 of the first 6 batters he faced to start the game.

In the limited time we had in our last day in Shizuoka, Richard offered us a choice of things to do.  Continuing with the policy of doing things that would interest an eleven-year-old boy, we decided to visit the Toro Museum at the site of an archeological excavation within the city.  This was somewhat like visiting Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, or at least the Indian village.  Tony had a chance to try his hand at the various crafts as practiced by pre-historic Japanese.  I learned what it is people are actually doing when they are planting rice in rice paddies.