Winter Greetings from the Tatsuki Family!
The year 1998 went by fast and was filled with memories and milestones. The whole family traveled to Canada in the summer and went to the cabin in Nojiri once in all four seasons this year. This photo shows Mount Myoko as seen from the rice fields of Kashiwabara village.
Maika entered grade five and joined the broadcast club. She makes weekly announcements over the school broadcast system and is developing more self-confidence. After much pleading, she got her own piano and started taking formal lessons. In December, she came in 16th place in the school marathon among all girls in grades five and six. She enjoys in-line skating and has added downhill skiing to her list of favorite sports.
Satoshi has also started to enjoy downhill skiing (the speed is what he likes the best!) but fishing for blue gill in a pond near our home in Nishinomiya is his passion despite a rather difficult start. The first time he tried to cast, he threw everything including the rod into the pond. The next time, he cast so far that the line ran out on the reel and he lost that hook, line and sinker. He is still busy going to YMCA twice a week and a tutor comes to work at home with him twice a week. He helps the foreign language teacher at school when the other students do not understand instructions and continues to enjoy Goosebumps (juvenile horror) videos, tapes and paperbacks in English.
Donna is almost finished her first full academic year at Kobe University of Commerce. She enjoys working with the talented and supportive teachers she has met there and teaching the practical-minded, out-going Commerce students. She moderated a panel discussion on Video at a conference near Tokyo and contributed articles, lesson plans and quizzes regularly to journals in print and on-line. In October, she presented a paper based on her dissertation at the Second Language Research Forum held at the University of Hawaii.
Shigeo was invited to present a paper at World Volunteer Congress held in Edmonton in August, and was also overseas in September to San Francisco as part of a joint Japan-US research initiative on urban earthquake disaster mitigation, which will take him to the US three times a year annually. He finished a book based on family systems scale development that was twelve years in the making. He continues to initiate and supervise research with colleagues and students. He has become a Finnish sauna enthusiast and had one installed at our cabin in Nojiri.
As we enter 1999, our thoughts go out to family, friends and colleagues around the world. Peace and love to all of you.
Shigeo, Donna, Satoshi and Maika Tatsuki
