Overseas Travel (2)

JAPAN TRIP AND TOSHIMI

 

In 1972 I decided to go on a trip to Japan, but I didn’t want to go on my own, so I approached Eric Parrish, who I had been mates with for a long time and he decided to come with me. Up until this time, I don’t think he’d done any trips overseas, but he was in the army or air force during the war and had been to some of the islands, half way to Japan where he spent some time, but this was to be his first trip on a passenger liner.

 

 

I did all the bookings this time, and the time came to leave so we caught a plane in Mt Isa, and flew to Sydney, where we got on a boat called the Chitral. We got in a 4 berth Cabin this time with a couple of other blokes, one of which was a dairy farmer so we had a slight connection but only slight, as we were used to working on 1000s of acres and this guy had about 200 acres.

 

We went up via Brisbane and stopped at Brisbane for a day where more passengers got on, and when I went to the lounge area on the boat I was surprised to see someone I had known for many years. It was Fr. Garvey who was the Parish Priest at Julia Creek and who used to come to McKinlay every month to say Mass, and who used to also come to our McKinlay house on these trips, and Mum would make lunch for him. As well as having lunch, he would down about 6 Stubbies of XXXX beer for the rest of the afternoon before he set off to return to Julia Creek. Lucky for him, there were no breathalysers in those days, as he would have been well over the limit, as well as us fellows that tried to keep up to his drinking habits as we didn’t like to think that a priest could “drink us under the table”.

 

He introduced Eric and me to the Japanese girl he was with, and who I think he stayed with, in Toyota, on his trip to Japan the year before. She was Toshimi Suzuki, and little did I know at the time, but she was to play a big part in making our trip to Japan very interesting, as well as quite a few of the other passengers that travelled on the Chitral to Japan on that trip. She could talk perfect English even at this early age, so it was easy for us to talk to her. Being from the “bush” where everyone speaks a bit of slang, I think she probably found us harder to understand then we did her.

 

 

The next port of call was Pt. Moresby and we went ashore there with a couple of blokes, from our cabin and from what I remember about Moresby, even though it was an English speaking town you just about had to speak Pidgin English for people to understand you. Quite a few Australians boarded the boat there and if they had lived and worked there for a few years they spoke a lot of Pidgin. I also found out they made plenty of money there, as they were big spenders in the bar and big drinkers.

 

Because our destination was Japan, Toshimi thought it would be a good idea for us to learn some Japanese, so she invited quite a few women on the boat and some men including me to learn a bit of Japanese, which was a good idea. People who live in these countries, love to hear you speak a few words in their language, which I found out later on when we did reach Japan. We had a stop over at Manila and then Hong Kong, and by this time, as well as Toshimi giving us lessons in Japanese every day, and because she had done this trip before, she became our tour guide all free of charge. She arranged a trip to the Great Wall of China for a group of us that had become friends with her through our Japanese language lessons – about 10 of us. We also went to the Floating Restaurant in Hong Kong. She seemed to be able to communicate with Chinese people, not so much speaking, but if she wrote notes they could understand the message she was trying to get across to them about what she wanted. She could do this because some of the Japanese writing system includes Chinese characters.

 

 

By this time we also met another Japanese person on the boat – Peter Goto, who was a camera technician from Sydney. He was to play a big part in out trip when we got to Tokyo. There was a fancy dress party on the boat, and I persuaded Toshimi to go as a Jolly Swagman which she did, and she won the event.

 

 

We got to Nagoya and this is where Toshimi was to leave us, as she and her family came from Toyota. Before she said goodbye, she arranged for her family to bring two cars and about 8 of us piled in and we had a tour of Nagoya, by Toshimi and her family before they took her home to Toyota, which was very kind of them.

 

Next stop was Tokyo and what a big city it was. It was very different to most other big cities I’d been to though, as it was a place where you never saw the sun, and not many trees. There was continual haze over the city because of the smog. Not many spoke English at this time, except students who were always very helpful if you wanted to know where to go or what train to get on. When you got on a train they packed you in like sardines, even had blokes pushing the last few passengers into the train from the platform. Any Japanese passenger male or female that got on a train, and was lucky enough to get a seat, immediately went to sleep, all of them, and a minute or two before their destination station they would wake up and get off. The other thing that was strange to us was that every man that got on a train, no matter what his occupation might be, wore a suit and a tie, factory workers and all, so they must have changed when they got to work .It must have been a rule of the company they worked for that they arrive at work in a suit.

 

Peter Goto was our first guide, and he took us to all the places to see in Tokyo .We had 2 single beds in our room and Peter slept on the floor between our 2 beds. He took us everywhere, and when he wasn’t there, Toshimi would come up from Nogoya and show us around. I remember she took us to a lot of temples. She took us to Mt Fuji where we went on the Bullet Train, which was a very fast and very comfortable. I spent a lot of time going to boarding school on trains from Gilliat to Toowoomba, which took 3 nights and 2½ days, 4 times a year but they were nothing like the Bullet Train, which was probably the fastest and best train in the world at that time. Toshimi took us to Japanese Inns where you do things in the Japanese traditional ways, like taking your shoes off at the entrance and never see them again until you leave for home. Also you sit on the floor to eat your meals.

 

 

Toshimi also took us where they do this cormorant fishing. You go out in a boat at night time and a guy has about 10 cormorants each one tied to each finger of both hands and he lets them out of a boat in the water on a lake, and when he sees one bird with a neck full of fish, he runs his thumb and forefinger up it neck and the bird spews the fish into container. Then he will bring in another bird and do the same and so on. All this is done at night time with the aid of a powerful light. The fish are only sardine size but 10 cormorants, can catch a lot of fish in a night.

 

There were a few other people that were on the passenger liner with us, that came along on these trips with us but by this time Toshimi had struck up a strong friendship with another Australian, Mavis Russell, even though Mavis was probably 20 years older than Toshimi or more. They went everywhere together and I think Mavis might have been staying with Toshimi, at Toyota some of the time, she was in Japan.

 

Eric and I spent 3 weeks in Japan then we flew back to Sydney then back to work in McKinlay. Toshimi, and to a lesser degree, Peter Goto, really made our trip to Japan. She knew everything about Japan, where to go, what to eat, and knew all the customs of the country, and most of all, she could talk perfect English. Some years later she ran an English Language Academy in her home town, Toyota. At various times she also acted as an interpreter for famous people that came there. Not only could she speak English perfectly but write perfectly as well. Mavis returned to Sydney but within a couple of years resigned from her job and went back to Toyota where Toshimi gave her a job in the Academy, for several years. During that time Toshimi took Mavis on many trips to a lot of different countries of the world too.

 

Eventually Mavis decided to return to Australia as she and her two year younger sister with a house in Upper Coomera and they lived together there, but even then Toshimi used to visit them and take care of any needs they might have, at least twice a year and take them to different places in Australia. They visited me here and stayed a week or so. These visits by Toshimi to Gold Coast went on for some years, and Toshimi would do everything to help those 2 elderly ladies on her visits. Sadly, through some family trouble that it difficult to understand, Mavis and Toshimi are no longer in touch. It is very sad for this friendship that started on the Chitral on a trip to Japan to end this way.

 

Toshimi is a world wide traveller, and she tells me she has been to 150 countries of the world, and she would know a lot about everyone of them. As well as this she is very efficient with computers and a very keen photographer and must have thousands of photos. She has about 10 computers and always gets the latest in cameras. I don’t know what other languages she knows but I remember she has learned seven languages. The fact that she can speak, understand, read and write English so well, has no doubt helped her when visiting all these countries of the world.