Quote for the Day 2/15/2011

Shane (after having spent time in Japan with his uncle Saiji, whom he had just met for the first time), to Hiromi: I think I'm more like Saiji than you.

Hiromi: I know. Worries me.

We all laughed.

Saiji is irrepressible and sociable--glad-handing with the best of them. He also does things vigorously, with large gestures and broad strokes. As a young man, he was often at odds with those in authority, and got in trouble because of it.

Hiromi, in contrast, loves quiet and solitary things like painstaking research. He's very safety-conscious and drives slowly and carefully. As a child he was a model student.

Comments I've heard from Hiromi's extended family members suggest that Hiromi is much like his father was in temperament.

In another conversation Shane recounted, he told Saiji while he was riding with Saiji at the wheel, "I can hardly believe you're my dad's brother. He always drives slowly."

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Glimpses of the kind Shane and Dorcas got into Japanese culture and our extended Japanese family's personalities are wonderful treasures--ordinary in some ways, to be sure, but valuable nonetheless, for the way they help us understand ourselves and form strong ties that bind all of us together.