Tuesday November 4th

We are hosted by the Hamamatsu Rotary Club and spoke at their club at noon (which is the largest Rotary Club in the District with 110 members). They have a very formal club meeting. In the morning we visited the Hamamatsu Photonics Company. The District 2620 Group Study Exhange Committee chairman is Tomoyuki Ikedo who has his own company now but he worked for H. Photonics company for 25 years and managed one of their divisions. One of their employees received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. They are a very high technical company which makes imaging equipment for hospital and products for a dozen other industries and employees thousands of people world wide. They try to answer the question "what can we do with light". Followingthe Rotary Club meeting we experienced one of my team members' favorite stops. A tour large local Distillery which brews beer and osaka which is owned by a Rotarian. They happened to be closed on Tuesday but the owner and his wife gave us a brief tour and then we sampled 6 or more types of osaka and beer. This is the sort of special treatment we have received during our stay in Japan. Fortunately none of us were driving. A visit to our third Buddihst Temple with another green tea ceremony featuring light green tea (which is much better). My host family lives 40 minutes from the Grand Hotel but they are worth every minute of the long drive back and forth each day. We ate dinner tonight at a Indian resturant (the first time for me to eat Indian food) which was delicious. Mariko's husband is Bill who is from Nepal. They stayed at the resturant until after midnight (Mariko walked me home at around 10:00 p.m. Then my best night's sleep so far.
Ken