My house guest was Mr. Yukio “Happy Man” Kato. You see, Yukio translated into English means happy man and he certainly was that. He liked to be called Yuki and explained to everyone he met here that he was, indeed, very, very happy.Yuki is retired from a Toyota subsidiary company where he worked in their Public Relations Division. I’ll bet he served them well because he has a lot of drive and a warm, engaging personality. Nobody could have had a better time visiting Newport Beach than Yuki.
I was particularly happy that Yuki liked high performance vehicles and we went on several “hot laps” together during his stay. I took him to the weekly “Cars and Coffee” event down at the Irvine Spectrum which he really enjoyed. He must have taken a photo of every car in attendance and boasted to me during his visit that he had taken over 1,000 photos. This makes sense, though, because Yuki is an accomplished amateur photographer and he brought me several of his beautiful outdoor shots to frame and hang in my home. (But where will they possibly go?)
Every morning and evening you could find him out on the deck taking photos of Newport Harbor and the Pavilion. The various lights and shadows he captured reflected upon his first-class talent as a photographer.
Yuki loved American breakfasts and we had two or three at local places where he delighted in always ordering pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs. He also liked putting ketchup and hot sauce on his eggs and I told him he was a real “native.”
While Yuki’s English skills weren’t the greatest we managed to communicate sort of well together. He was always up for seeing more sights and meeting new people, especially where white wine was being served. It didn’t matter whether it was Chardonnay, Fumé Blanc, Viognier or Pinot Grigio--this man loved his whites and we certainly “tipped” a couple during his brief stay.
The morning he left, the happy man let his guard down a little and actually shed a few ters as he boarded the van to LAX. He had me promise to mail some postcards for him and they were all addressed in Japanese. The message, however, was in English and it was the same on all the cards he was sending to his friends at home.
The message read, “I am having a good time in Newport Beach. I don’t want to come home.” We had heard this from several visitors, both essay winners and students.
I’ll look forward to keeping in touch with my new friend and hope to see him again on our next trip to Okazaki in 2009, celebrating the 25th anniversary of our sister city relationship.
by Kent Moore
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