Postscript: Sendai Japan - How it all happened.

                       

In Loving memory of my wife, Nancy Buss Bahari May Allah bless her soul.

 Postscript: Sendai, Japan

It has been almost 20 years now since my family left Sendai, Japan and relocated along the east coast of the Malay Peninsula in the state of Terengganu. My wife Nancy, God rest her soul, passed away in 2008 in a nursing home in Waterloo, Illinois, succumbing to what doctors diagnosed as Alzheimer's—or in her case, 'Rapid dementia.'

It was through her employment as an ESL teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, that we were able to make our move from San Francisco to Sendai, Japan. Through a program by a private company called Pacific Reach,' she was hired to teach in Japan, and the entire family’s relocation was covered. It was a blessing in my life, as San Francisco had become too expensive and emotionally heavy for our family to bear. Nancy and I were heading toward the edge, and it was Allah’s grace that guided us toward a change.

                                           Nancy, Her Mom, Alma, and her brother Randy Buss

The sketchbook I bought and took with me to Japan...

The move itself went smoothly thanks to the support of our friends in San Francisco—friends like the Berberis family from San Jose, the Roethe family (Peter, Tomi, Kai, and Eli), and others such as David and Diane Carlson, Jack, Yuri, Jesse, and Christie Hallock. These were friends from across the street, from the Zen Center where Nancy and I were married, from the very heart of our community. The Roethes even hosted a beautiful send-off party that left me deeply moved.

A Cherry Blossom gathering. Welcome to Sendai.

The statue of Lord Date Masamune overlooks the City of Sendai from across the River Hirose.

Thus began my second Hijrah—my second great migrational shift. The first was in the early 1970s when I left Malaysia with my first wife and son (now a pilot in Dubai) to live in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

We arrived in Sendai at the Koyo Grand Hotel after a grueling series of flights and bullet train rides. We were lodged there for three days until our new home was ready, and thanks to Nancy’s employer and two kind gentlemen assigned to help us, everything was arranged with remarkable care.

                                    My children's kindergarten was at the Mukaiyama Yochien.

Thus began our life in the great city of Sendai—a city that, in 2011, would witness one of Japan’s most tragic natural disasters: an earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami

Acrylic Painting: A View of The City of Sendai from Yasoen Park. (3 ft x 2 ft, sold)