No75-2

Dear Customers & Friends
Happy New Year from Japan! This is Kimono Flea Market ICHIROYA's News Letter No.75.We are very sorry for our holidays of previous week. From today we open our office, and start listing again. We wish we can list more valuable and charming items during this year.
We wish to express our profound sorrow over the suffering and loss of life resulting from the earthquakes and tsunami in South Asia and Africa. I have been to small town of east coast of India, and Phuket. And we might have went afflicted countries for winter vacation, if our elder daughter Shoko doesn't have entrance exam in January. Just same as Indonesia, Japan is also on the plate boundary. We have frequent earthquakes, but we can not imagine such huge tsunami occured and killed such numerous people. News says lots of summer visitors from Western countries are also struck by tsunami. We worry natives of that area, and at a time we are worrying that friends or relatives of our customers may be involved in this disaster.We have donated $1000 to UNICEF Tsunami Relief Effort through Paypal. That money is from your patronage, and which you allowed us as profit to our service. So the money are from Ichiroya and Ichiroya's all customers. We are happy if our money can be little help for victims.
During our holidays, we ( Ichiro & Yuka ) went both parent's houses with younger daughter Mugi. Both parents are already middle of 70s, and they all have some disease. Now they can live independently in their houses, but someday they must become to need more help of us. They are becoming shorter, and becoming like child. We also attended alumni association and met old friends separately. Alumni association I attended is a small gathering of classmates of high school. It continues annually for these 25 years(!) after our graduation (1979). Teacher is 85 years old now, and little bit hard of hearing, but he never be absent from annual gathering. Approx 45 classmates guraduated, two women are dyed by cancer. Brightest student in our class became a doctor, a captain of handball become a product manager of Sony, most ironic student became a professor of famous National University, two students (include me) are running their own business, and so on. During exchanging the latest news about ourselves, I can not help to have complicated feelings.These are all we have done during this holidays. I got a cold at around Christmas, and I didn't have enough passion to go fishing in this cold weather. We only looked some DVD cinema in our room. I looked 'The Last Samurai'. It seemed to bring us many new customers to our men's kimono, mainly through ebay. Queerness of recognition of Japan in this film exceeds my permissible zone, even thought I know it is only the entertainment movie. 'Red Sun'( directed by Terence Young,1971) is way better, if we look for samurai spirit in Western movie. And of course if you have never seen Akira Kurosawa's film, please check ' Seven Samurai''Yojinbou' and other his works!But now I feel that we still have lots of works to be done, to introduce our culture to the world.
Today we have listed rare Kurume kasuri, large ranru, sakiori, unique tiger motif tsutsugaki, and antique shibori kimono and fabrics. We wish you could check them. http://www.ichiroya.com/item/search.php?md=0104
And if you gave us e-mails, sent money through Paypal and gave new orders during our holidays, thank you very much for your patience to wait for our reply--we will be respondingas soon as possible.domo arigatou gozaimasu
How did you start 2005?We waited and greeted each other when it became January 01 which we usuall do each year and then went to bed.
Those who are born in this year, and who becomes multiples of 12 during this year, you are `toridoshi umare'(born in the year of rooster)and supposed to have special blessing.
We wish all of you a wonderful and joyful 2005, dozo minasama yoiotoshio.
Ichiro & Yuka WadaKimono Flea Market "ICHIROYA"http://www.ichiroya.com
e-mail: info@ichiroya.comaddress: Asia-shoji Bldg.301 1841-1 Nishi 1 chome Wakamatsu cho Tondabayashi city Osaka 584-0025 JAPANTEL&FAX ****( international number ) - 81-721-23-5446