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.