Sakai City reaches out to ASEAN (Part two)

The farewell party hosted by the Sakai-ASEAN Week executive committee was held on Sunday, Oct. 14. Delegates from five ASEAN countries, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, were all asked to go up on stage, where we expressed our appreciation for our respective sojourns in Sakai City.

The journalists, numbering 16, had a stay of six days, while the student ambassadors or minkantaishi came a week earlier and had the distinctive experience of a homestay program, with Sakai City families welcoming the foreign guests into their homes.

Representing the Philippines were Audrey Rose Dusaran and John Robert Villar of De La Salle University, accompanied by their professor in International Studies, Bernadette Hieida. Audrey and John did a duet of Leron-leron Sinta for their obligatory musical rendition, before each spoke of their enriching experience in the care of host families.

Their foster parents and siblings joined their tables, as did the rest of the hosts with the other ASEAN students. Soon some tears were shed, as these parents also spoke of how it was to have reaffirmed cultural affinities and exchanged unique perspectives with their adopted kids.

It showed, for instance, in how John Robert’s foster parents would apply the pa-pogi hand-as-pistol gesture close to their chins whenever they all drew close together for a photo.

For her part, Audrey Rose had the distinct privilege of dividing her fortnight’s stay between two families, one of which was an extra volunteer host.

The program started five years ago, with Sakai City intent on reviving the interchange it enjoyed across the seas with countries of SouthEast Asia during the international port city’s heyday in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Dr. Hisanori Kato, senior advisor for the ASEAN Exchange program of the Sakai City government, and who occasionally teaches in DLSU, arranges for the selection and invitation of participants.

Our six-day sked was filled nearly to the brim with activities and immersion in the city’s prime attractions. We were welcomed at City Hall by Sakai Mayor Osami Takeyama on our first day. And we met with him a second time for brief interviews. Replying to our question on his possible consideration of a request for sister-cityhood from our country, the mayor suggested firming up complementary exchanges on particular areas of interest first.

One such point of focus may be waterway dredging and rehabilitation. It took Sakai 50 years to clean up its once polluted canals and rivers, and now they serve tourism interest apart from being hailed as a success story for environmentalism.

Sakai is also well known for manufacturing most of Japan’s bicycles as well as the best of its cutlery — at least two industries that our manufacturers could well take lessons from.

Also in our itinerary were visits to the city museum, a Japanese garden at the multi-purpose Daisen Park, a Zen Buddhist temple, participation in the much-revered tea ceremony, as well as tours of a paper-making company and a a konbu or kelp factory.

At the temple, most of us sat in facing rows inside the meditation hall, with the venerable Zen master pacing ominously before us with his spanking stick. The Indonesian stand-upper for his video crew made sure to attract the master’s attention just so he could experience, and later talk about, how it was to receive resounding whacks on his shoulders as a wake-up call.  

 At the Shin-an teahouse, we were surprised to find out that the tea master was a lady, as well as to discover that it took half an hour just to have each one of us don the ceremonial kimono with flaring skirts for the men.

The old lady who made an example of me, or rather dressed me up for others to follow the rudiments, couldn’t help but give a hand whack at my paunch which she had difficulty girding up with an obi.

At the sumo practice hall, we watched as young boys broke into tears in frustration, while being manhandled by men-mountains. Again the intrepid Indonesian stand-upper, at more than six feet tall, tried his hand, both hands in fact, plus his head, in going up against an immovable loin-clothed force that couldn’t be budged an inch.

Across the dojo was a large domed gymnasium that could seat about 5,000, on its center an exquisitely designed mound with the sumo ring, above which a grid of lights and banners spelled traditional Japan. 

A fascinating sidelight was our visit to the Yamaguchi house built in 1615, and listed in 1996 as an important cultural property. Three kinds of hardwood trees formed the beams that supported the high ceilings, with each tatami-floor room allowed much light to shine on the clean, minimalist arrangements.

Our canal boat tour took us around much of the old city that has now been taken over by thriving industries, and all the way out to sea past water-lock gates that rose immensely, but which still proved lower against the recent tsunami.

Past the old port that still serves as a modest harbor rose a statue of the Lady Dragon of the Sea, resplendent if all in white, with a curving stylized sculpture beside her to represent the waves of destiny.

Then there was the old Western-style lighthouse completed in 1877 by the historic harbor — done in wood, the shingles painted white. It doesn’t function anymore, but rather stands now as yet another symbol of Sakai’s rich heritage, even as this continues to accept the inroads of modernity.

Accenting the wooden lighthouse and its backdrop of sea are high-rising girdles of flyovers and skyways, while on another side stretches a row of manufacturing plants. 

Indeed, Sakai City can lay best claim to Japan’s continuing phenomenon of tradition meeting up and merging seamlessly with modernity.

It’s been quite a leap over six centuries, and now its neighbors from the southern seas come each year for Sakai-ASEAN Week — to relive and reaffirm the affinities born of no borders, not even the vast waters that continue to bind us together in what could be, at best, a shared destiny.

Sourced: philstar