By Shihou Sasaki The North American Post

Seattle’s Japanese icon for the next year will be a new face — Nori Aoki. The 33-year-old Japanese baseball player signed with the Mariners for $5.5 million in 2016 in addition to an option for 2017. Aoki joined a press conference last Thursday with General Manager Jerry Dipoto at Safeco Field, saying that he joined the team to enjoy “coffee” but also to “win the World Series.” Aoki was born in Hyuga, Miyazaki, and played for the Yakult Swallows for eight years in Japan where he was named as an All-star seven times. His consistent stats have continued in the big leagues as he has played for the last four years as a leadoff hitter. “Adding Nori addresses our desire to be more athletic in the outfield, as well as more contact oriented in the batter’s box,” said Dipoto. “His consistency, versatility and energetic style of play will fit us very well.” Dipoto added that the team plans to rotate five outfielders depending on their situation and opponent, but Aoki will play most every game and all three positions. Aoki will be the ninth Japanese player to play for the Mariners following Mac Suzuki, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ichiro Suzuki, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Masao Kida, Kenji Johjima, Munenori Kawasaki and Hisashi Iwakuma. Iwakuma was expected to stay in Seattle as Dipoto said resigning him was a priority, but media reported that the Japanese pitcher who played for the Mariners for four years and pitched a no-hitter this year will leave for the Los Angeles Dodgers and a $45 million contract for three years. The local community has had a good relationship and memories with Iwakuma through an annual community Japan Night with the Mariners and his welcome party in 2013. The community has already started discussing how to build the same good relationship with Aoki. The Nikkei Community Network, a coalition of the local Nikkei community organizations and businesses, had a meeting last Thursday and agreed to reach out to Aoki and the Mariners about a welcome event as the group did for Iwakuma and former manager Don Wakamatsu.

By Maiya Gessling The North American Post It’s taken a five year detour, but on Wednesday the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) “Akatsuki” space probe sucessfully entered into orbit around Venus, after its first attempt to do so failed in 2010. JAXA reports that the Akatsuki, meaning “dawn,” is in good shape, and it has already sent back preliminary images of Venus. Over the next while, JAXA will gradually adjust the probe’s orbit from about 13 days to nine days, bringing it closer to the planet. This will allow for clearer photos and other more accurate measurements, as the Akatsuki investigates Venus’ atmosphere and volcanic surface. In 2010, the $205 million gold, box-shaped probe missed Venus’ gravitational pull and shot past it towards the sun. Now, it is scheduled to settle into orbit and begin regular operations in April 2016. Just a week ago, another Japanese probe, the Hayabusa 2, passed by Earth to use it’s gravitational pull as a sort of slingshot to propel it towards an asteroid. It was launched a year ago on a six-year mission to bring back mineral samples from “Ryugu,” the name of a mythical Japanese castle that was given to the tiny asteroid.

Tanpopo no Kai, a Japanese women’s club in the South Puget Sound area, gathered for its annual end-of year-party at La Quinta Inn & Suites on Nov. 28. About 130 attendees enjoyed lunch and performances including karaoke and dance. The club will mark its 30th anniversary in 2016, and President Yuko Toth said that the group will continue to support friendship among its members and community service. Photo courtesy of Tanpopo no Kai タコマ地域の日系婦人会「たんぽぽの会」による恒例の忘年会が11月28日、タコマ市内のラキンタ・インで開かれた。約１３０人が出席、年末を迎えて賑やかな会となった。来年は発足30周年を迎え、トース裕子会長のあいさつでは、同会の使命でもある会員相互の親睦、地域社会への貢献などを続けていく力強い抱負が語られた。食事のあとの演芸では、踊りや歌などが舞台で披露され、各会員の元気な姿が印象に残る会となった。 （写真提供　＝　たんぽぽの会）

Just a few days before Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is due in India for an official visit from Dec. 11-13, Japan has beat out China to win the contract to build India’s first bullet train.
The train tracks will be built between the cities of Mumbai and Ahmedabad, a 500 km (310 mi) route, and will cost about $14.6 billion. Abe is expected to offer to lend more than $8.1 billion of the total. Indian officials have said that their decision was based on the “easy and affordable” financing terms offered by Japan. China, meanwhile, is conducting feasibility studies on longer high speed rail tracks between Chennai and Delhi and New Delhi and Mumbai.
The rail deal will come with an exclusive yen loan program that will help to support Japanese companies in India and Japanese-Indian collaborations. One condition will require project contracts to use at least 30 percent Japanese-made materials.

The world is still reacting to the terrorist attacks in Paris that took place last month, and in response, Japan is launching it’s planed Counterterrorism Unit-Japan (CTU-J) now instead of in April.
The CTU-J is led by the prime minister’s office but is under the Foreign Ministry. In practice, a staff of 20 officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, National Police Agency and other bodies will be deployed on diplomatic missions overseas in the Middle East, North and West Africa, Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Japan is planning to host several international events, the most high profile being the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. They will also host the Rugby World Cup in 2019 and the Group of Seven Summit in Mie Prefecture as soon as May. The summit will bring together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. These upcoming events have sparked discussions on increased security for months, including the establishment of the CTU-J, an executive board dedicated to international terrorism chaired by Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kazuhiro Sugita and further monitoring and surveillance on suspected domestic terrorists and possible cyber-threats.
The Ministry of Justice is also introducing legislation to expand wiretapping and strengthen border control. Suga hopes to expand a register of skilled engineers who can be called upon to counter cyber-attacks to 30,000 names by 2020. The government plans to implement a certification system in 2017 to support this system of engineers.

By Nancy Matsumoto For The North American Post Family is important to Yagi, explains his daughter Sakura, because his own was fractured when he was very young. His father died when he was five, leaving his mother to raise Yagi and his four brothers on her own. Before his life was cut short, Yagi’s father, “had a vision of technology taking over the future” of Japan, recalls Yagi. Anticipating the change, he moved from selling fish by bicycle rickshaw to selling electrical lamps for fishing boats. After the family home was burned down during World War II he had to start over from scratch. He began buying up spent car battery cases all over the Kanto region; they were in demand by battery manufacturers who lacked the resources to make new cases. Yagi recalls traveling to Kyoto with his father on business, where ryokan staff would call him “Bon,” slang for “little boy.” The nickname stuck, so instead of being called by his given name, Shuji, he was ever after known as Bon. Life changed after his father’s death in 1953, when Yagi was four. In those days, Yagi explains of single mothers, “they thought of you as if you were disabled, a cripple.” As his mother toiled to support her five sons, they were left largely to their own devices. As a successful restaurateur in America, Yagi did not forget his mother’s sacrifices. “He called his mother every night at the same time, until she passed away,” says Saori Kawano. During the Occupation, Yagi became fascinated by the flow of shiny goods entering the country through U.S. miitary bases, and the boom in manufacturing. He spent a summer with a great uncle who was one of Japan’s first successful post-war entrepreneurs, making his fortune in the manufacture of plastic dolls for export to the west. Sitting in his second-floor East Village office, above Cha-An, Yagi pulls one of the ancient dolls from a cluttered shelf; it clearly holds a totemic value for him, a symbol of both America and entrepreneurship.

“One day I want to be like him,” he remembers thinking of his Uncle Daihachi. He also wanted to see “the country that helped Japan transition from bare feet to sandal to shoe.” Companies like Panasonic were launching the post-war “Japanese Economic Miracle,” yet the Japanese themselves, Yagi notes, couldn’t afford those products yet. Realizing that there were “too many potatoes in one barrel,” he decided he had to get out of the country. Mixing metaphors, he recalls saying to himself, “I’ve got to get out of this hakozushi (pressed sushi box).” Perhaps conveniently, he missed the college entrance exam to Tokyo University that he had planned to take; he was busy helping his best friend Kazuo Wakayama (who went on to become a business partner and fellow restaurant entrepreneur in the East Village) on his milk delivery route early that morning. “I was all sweaty and I asked my older brother what to do,” recalls Yagi. His advice: “Tell our mother you’re going to the U.S. to study English.” First, Yagi tried to acquire some English-language skills through odd jobs, including putting sheets on beds at the New Otani Hotel, working as a waiter at the Daiichi Hotel in Akasaka, and as a driver at the U.S. Army’s Camp Zama. He also volunteered for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense force for a year. He saved his money and lit out for America in 1968, starting at the bottom as a grave digger, gas station attendant, and then diner dishwasher in Philadelphia, where he worked his way up to short-order cook. The idea of introducing Japanese food to Americans had taken hold, but first he wanted to travel the world. He arrived back in New York from his travels in 1976, launching a vegetable wholesale business in the East Village with his high school friend Wakayama.

It was a rough neighborhood, rife with drug dealers and squatters. Yet Yagi says, “Jewish people started here, and Polish and Ukrainians, and then the Japanese. Everybody was accepted, and we never felt strange.” St. Mark’s Church, nearly at the center of his restaurant galaxy, was for a time the burial site of Commodore Matthew Perry, whose tall ships opened Japan to the west in 1854. Plus, notes Yagi, “East,” or higashi, describes Japan. “That’s why I opened all my restuarants here,” he says simply. Yagi figured that in Japan, people his age were working 50- or 60-hour work weeks, and if he just worked like them, “one day maybe I’ll be the front runner here—I didn’t hesitate to work long hours.” He got to know a chef at the Empire Diner, the iconic Tenth Avenue art moderne watering hole that stayed open round the clock and attracted a bohemian crowd. By the early 1980s, Yagi had saved enough money to lure the chef away, and opened his own 24-hour-diner on Second Avenue in the East Village. Called 103 Second Avenue, it, too, became a hot spot, a regular for artists Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. Haring regularly covered the black walls of the bathroom with graffiti, and Yagi, unaware of it’s potential future value, says, “I used to erase it.” He adds, “My employees were all gay and I sold coffee for seventy-five cents, or a dollar-fifty for unlimited refills. John Belushi would come at midnight and loved Sloppy Joes. Madonna used to come before she was famous, too.” The stars had no idea that the diner they loved, decorated like an understated Japanese establishment in warm wood floors and wooden tables, was run by a Japanese man. Foreshadowing his continued relative anonymity, Yagi says, “I didn’t want anybody to know.” His stealth “Japanese diner” gave way to his first real Japanese restaurant in 1984, Hasaki, a sushi restaurant on East 9th Street named after the small town in Chiba where his father was born. The underground sake bar Decibel followed in 1993, and Sakagura in 1996. Yagi’s empire building was underway. His daughter Sakura attributes Yagi’s success to his insatiable curiosity and appetite for work. “As a self-employed person, he’s always on it,” she observes. “There’s never a moment he’s off, and he doesn’t hesitate when there’s a problem to be solved.” In addition to overseeing his 13 restaurants, he owns and manages several apartment buildings, is the New York agent for Toto, and at one time was also president of a beer exporting company. When Yagi decides on a new restaurant concept, his daughter notes, he travels through Japan doing research, decides what to focus on, and finds people to implement his vision. And, she adds, “He’s never afraid to ask questions,” a trait that was embarrassing to her when she was younger, but which she has come to appreciate. At 67, Yagi shows no sign of slowing down. He plans to expand the business, says Sakura, likely in Japan. But he’s also turned his thoughts to the humanitarian concerns that have marked his career in New York. As chance would have it, he was downtown for both the 1993 below-ground bombing of the World Trade Center and for the September 11, 2001 attack. In 1993 he was on the 87th floor of the World Trade Center, visiting the Hokkaido Takushosku Bank when the underground bomb was detonated. On 9/11, he was with Sakura at the immigration offices nearby the trade center. He took his daughter’s hand and walked her back to the safety of the East Village through Chinatown. Shaken, he took the attacks as a wake-up call to perform an act of Zen self-discipline to honor the dead. As an end-of-year symbolic cleansing, he decided to give up something he loved—sake—and did not imbibe it again for 10 years, until the day his son turned 21. He was one of several community leaders who started New York City’s akimatsuri fall festival in 1990, and is currently leading the effort to repair a statue of Shinran Shonin that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and now stands in front of the New York Buddhist Church. Drawing his roster of restaurants into his charitable activities, he hosts a yearly dinner for Nikkei seniors at Shabu Tatsu. Through a lifetime of bold entrepreneurialism and constant activity, Yagi has created a microcosm of Japan within New York City, introducing the food-scapes of everyday Tokyo to locals more familiar with pizza and bagels. For his “last achievement,” Yagi has his sights set on importing a more spiritual, or cultural Japanese asset to New York: He wants to start a non-profit devoted to the Japanese principle of ichinichi ichizen, or “one good act per day.” Since he shows no sign of slowing down, it’s unclear when he will launch the non-profit, but Yagi envisions it as yet another way of making the city a better place. “It’s very Japanese, and something I grew up with,” he says. “It’s not meditating,” he explains, “but improving things, through even the smallest of acts.” All photos are courtesy of Nancy Matsumoto. Edtor’s note: This is the second part of the article originally posted on the Japanese American National Museum’s Discover Nikkei at www.discovernikkei.org. The writer is a New York City-based freelance writer whose website is www.nancymatsumoto.com and blog is http://nancymatsumoto.blogspot.com. She is currently working on the English-language publication of her grandparents’ book of tanka poetry, Michigan Kohan.