76 days.

Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's 1984, is trying to rebuild history by talking to possible witnesses to hear it from them "what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution." When I was told that I would meet with Professor John F. Howes on Friday, I felt in a way like Winston. And what a wonderful meeting it was! Professor Howes shared his memories about the end of the Pacific War, post-war Japan where he happened to work for the occupation administration as translator and interpreter, sixties and seventies a major part of which he also lived in Japan. We talked for more than two hours and hardly even noticed that. We could have gone on for two more hours or longer, hadn't Professor Howes had to leave for another appointment, but we decided to get together again in the near future.

Saturday was a long but very nice day. After I had helped June with the church's housekeeping, I started preparation for the "Picnic on the Patio" on the occasion of Dmitri's birthday. I set up all tables, chairs, hooked up Nintendo Wii to a 29" tube TV (my old good friend Dennis generously lended me the console and games). It took me a while to install screen, projector and PA sound system for the area that was supposed to be a small movie theatre and gaming area for the "serious" PlayStation3 gamers. Long before 4 p.m., when Dmitri's friends were invited to come for "their" part of the picnic, everything, including the obligatory pizza, was ready. The idea was that they would have their small party and by 5:30 p.m. they would join (or be joined by) all other guests. Well, as they say, "it never goes according to the plan." By 5 p.m. only four of his friends arrived at different time, but there were already some early guests to the picnic. So, Dmitri's dinner started one hour late and the picnic--30 minutes earlier. Shortly after 5:30 all tables had been taken, there was no more space on the serving table but the food still kept coming (the bulletin suggested "just a little bit of chicken and chips") but pizza left nothing behind but empty boxes, a little bit of aroma and quiet envious questions, "Did you get a slice?"; in our movie theatre was on "The Dark Knight" in high definition so no seats were available; and Nintendo Wii was occupied by fans of tennis, golf and bowling. Dmitri's guests all showed up but much later then expected. Altogether, about 70-80 people, including our dear old friends Emidio and Elena, Farli and Kristi, Gabriel and Cornelia, were having an exquisite dinner (pizza and chips don't count), lively conversations, playing games and watching a movie, apparently enjoying themselves. After 8:30, when the party started fading out, Dmitri & Co. took over the theatre and turned it into a battleground "The Batman vs. Bad Dudes" (it is NOT the official title of the game). What a coincidence! Surprisingly, they were not very much impressed by Mr. B's ability to hung upside down with a very comically serious expression on his face or to spread his wings, so in about 10-15 minutes they switched to the "LittleBigPlanet" and that was when the real fun began--the laughter didn't stop for nearly one hour. By 10 p.m. all guests were gone, dishes washed, tables cleaned. Dmitri stayed with me, but Irina had to go home as we forgot to bring our cat to the party--he didn't count on leftovers, but was positive that he was entitled to a dinner, even if it was just a cat food. Dmitri and I played for some time--he was exploring a new game and I practiced my serves and golf swings on Wii.

Next day, everybody at the church was talking about the party, but after the service was over, during the fellowship coffee and snack time it felt like "Picnic. Part Deux"--no need to go into details. Our friends from church, Peter and June, took Irina with them to pick blackberries and I spent the most part of the afternoon helping another Peter to put together a picnic table. Peter is a professional carpenter and watching him how he is doing this or that certain operation and working under his guidance was an extremely useful experience. Dmitri joined us to clean up the area where we worked and move the tables back inside the church building.

After 7 p.m. Irina and Dmitri returned home--Monday morning he was going back to the island so they needed some time to have him ready for the next day. I still had to move the equipment and extra tables and chairs to the storage room and put the walls back. After I had finished, everything looked perfectly ready for Monday. The party was over...