Ray Downs was headmaster at ASIJ during my years there, and the one who signed my parents’ contracts to work at the school. He was the sort of administrator who had done his long years of teaching, making him deeply aware of the needs of students and faculty and willing to consider them before the needs of the private school as a business venture.

Mr. Downs (as well as his wife Lavinia, the school’s head librarian) had an encyclopedic memory of the students who had made their way through the Naka Meguro and Chofu campuses over the decades. More than a decade ago I mentioned that I had gotten a job at Japan Echo, and they instantly asked whether Suzanne Trumbull (an early 1960s ASIJ grad) was still there. Some info on this couple and the role they played at the school is on the ASIJ website.

Reposting a letter from one of his children, since it’s easier to point people to the info here than to forward it to everyone:

To my dear ASIJ friends,

It is with both sadness and relief that I pass on the news that our father, Ray F. Downs, died peacefully on March 27th, Friday. Since his brain tumor diagnosis in May 1997, Dad led a remarkable life, largely due to the untiring efforts and determination of our mother, Vicky. Following their move to Seattle in 1999, Dad’s strength and cognitive abilities improved sufficiently for him to live a fairly full life including taking adult education classes (which he loved – particularly music), walking, birding and even traveling to Japan, China, Mexico and Belize. By all accounts, it is almost miraculous that he was able to do so much and for so long following such a serious brain injury. While he never recovered fully to the point of being the “old” energetic, intelligent Dad we love and miss so dearly, his thoughtful, loving personality was clearly in evidence throughout the remainder of his life. He is and will be greatly missed.

I deeply regret that his four grand daughters (Sophie age 11, CC age 8, Rachel age 6 and Becca age 1) will have never known the Dad who epitomized so many wonderful virtues including humor, intelligence, compassion, and commitment, but as I said to Dad so many times in his final days, we will do all we can to ensure that they grow up knowing what a remarkable man he was. Hopefully, he can go on to inspire them as he inspired his own children and so many others.

We are planning a service in Seattle in late April. Details will be forthcoming and I will gladly pass them on to any who are interested and might be able to attend. Participation by all who knew and loved Dad would be most welcome.

This brings much love to you from all of us,

Constie

Rest in peace, Mr. Downs.

More than that, though, I was tired of never being able to log in. This hosting company isn’t the best I could have chosen. Time to look into new digs for durf.org, I think.

Work remains busy. Baby remains adorable. Last night I had a quick drink or three with Jed the brave JAT webperson. He showed me his MacBook Air and the translation software he’s working on: langwidget. (LangWidget? He studiously avoids the shift key on that site so it’s hard to tell.) Looked very slick—it works in a browser and lets translators share their translation units (pairs of words or phrases for source and target languages) with the other folks using the software, using the Internet and data clouds and magic and so on. Not exactly the sort of product I could put to good use in my unpredictable, nonrepetitive work, but for many kinds of translation these tools are indeed helpful and his may one day be a nice, platform-agnostic addition to their number.

Click the pic for photos with captions in Japanese. This was the first time I used iWeb to actually publish anything online, so it was like an adventure! to the land where tightly coded websites are extinct. But no matter. Anyway, I was dressed as Saitô Yûki, the “handkerchief prince,” a high school baseball pitcher who won fans in this year’s national tournament for his ridiculously long-lasting arm and his little towel he used to wipe his face instead of his sleeve. My wife went as a baseball.

(Now with all improved, not so monstrously large image of book cover.)

Matt Staples posing with Daniel Fish’s little tyke, Jordan Lee da Silva Fish. I’m not sure where “Naked Noodle” is located but I’m guessing it doesn’t involve lots of Japan-style hot ramen slurping. The soup splashback could get painful.

. . . when you’re wandering around Flickr looking at stuff. Hi James!

A and the Js played a show in San Francisco recently. The non-Peter Durfees all attended. Here they be:

Durf,
You need to spice up your blog.
I read it every other day.
Maybe you can mention me in it sometime?
sb#21

You got it, baby! “Steve Boyd.” The following post is a reprint of something from this old page, and it’s all for you.

OKUTAMA FESTIVAL!

In summers past the Bochi crowd would take weekends off, fleeing western Tokyo for evern more western parts of Tokyo. Okutama! We would head up the hill to the six-lane and hit that rental shop for tents and camping mats. It was too warm to need many sleeping bags, but we took some along all the same because of the rocks. The damn rocks.

We would head up on the train–Tama Bochi Mae to Musashi Sakai to Tachikawa to Ome to Okutama. End of the line, near the tallest peak in Tokyo Prefecture, Kumotoriyama. It’s a pleasant place to spend time, and many people do just that, and by the time we got there all the good camping spots were generally taken, and we would head closer to the river bank, with the big rocks. The ones that went right under our tents.

The river runs cold and clear there, except when heavy rains hit the area, sweeping mud and silt off the hills and into the river. You see the results in the pictures. One result you don’t see is the river rising, affecting–who else?–the idiots camped on the banks. Every time we headed up there a typhoon would hit, and up would come the river level. The loudspeakers would broadcast their message of doom: “Get off of the river bank now!” (Scary sidenote: a few years ago some people didn’t, and when the dam gates were opened the water rushed down and washed most of them away.)

Four fine fotos above. (1) The crew in a lull in the rain. Me, Misa, Duke, Boyd, Beach, Sherry, Glas, and Jen. Beach is no longer with us. Jen should not have been with us at that point (but Glas insisted). And Boyd should not have been in that hat. (2) Cooling our heels, part one. Crap, now I’m in the hat. Glaser could lift a smaller one. Boyd is wondering what to do with his noodles. (3) Boyd figures out what to do with the yakisoba. Beach is less than thrilled, but the other three of us are! (4) We took a walk up the road and found a karaoke club. A fat man grilled meat on the barbecue on the balcony overlooking a branch of the river. We talked with him and his friends, drinking beer they offered us, and when we realized Boyd was gone we looked for him and found him in the bar–singing his little heart out. “New York, New York.” His desire to entertain never dried up, and it has earned him an Emmy, by the way . . .

Not that Boyd is a Bochi. He never spent his night on Perv Mountain. But since I am a good guy I include him on this page anyway.

I wonder if this one comes with a hefty cash prize. Congrats!