Wednesday March 29, 2006. This was our last day in Japan, and we had a few hours before heading back to the airport. I was thinking we should leave early to make sure we made our plane on time. I got a very strong prompting to do genealogy. I said a prayer saying that if anybody wanted their work done, they needed to let me know now who they were, since it may be a while before we would ever be able to go to Japan again. After that, Celestine’s cousin, Hiroko, asked if I would like to see the family grave, and we gladly accepted the invitation. She also showed us the family butsudan (located in Kazuteru's house) and Hiroko translated the names of deceased relatives. In Japan, the death dates and age at death are in the butsudan. The dates consisted of different Japanese eras, and we translated to the western date system.

Here is a picture of the butsudan in Kazuteru's house:

Here is our kids' Japanese genealogy, as far as I know:

1. Jared, Jessica, Jacob, Samuel
2. Michael Lane Hobbs (father)
2. Celestine Hobbs (mother)
3. Gregory Joseph Kupski "George" (Grandfather)
3. Utako Sato Pitcher (Grandmother, maiden name is Sato)
4. Sue Takita Sato (great grandmother) b 1904 d 2/4/1949 (age 45)
4. Kazuo Sato (great grandfather) b 1893 d 4/13/1947 (age 54)
5. Hama Sato (great great grandmother) b 1867 d 1/26/1944 (age 77)
5. Kazumoto Sato (great great grandfather) b1867 d9/1/1923 (age 56)
6. Hachirouemon Sato (great great great grandfather)*

*The generation before Hachiroemon was probably Samurai

For those interested in the Japanese date system, here are the names and the death dates written in the butsudan. For fun, look up Showa, Taisho, and Heisei with GOOGLE to see about these Japanese periods or eras. If we can find a Samurai line with the name "Tamura," we may get even more information!

Name Death_date Age_at_death
Kazuo Sato Showa 22 nen 4 gatsu 13 nichi 54 sai
Sue Sato Showa 24 nen 2 gatsu 4 nichi 45 sai
Kazumoto Sato Taisho 12 nen 9 gatsu 1 nichi 56 sai
Hama Sato Showa 19 nen 1 gatsu 26 nen 77 sai
Teu "Cho" Sato Heisei 3 nen 5 gatsu 5 nichi 88 sai
Kazuaki Sato Showa 40 nen 24 sai
Etsuko Sato Showa 9 nen 4 sai
Aiko Sato** Showa 38 nen 31 sai

**Kazuyoshi San's 1st wife (mother of Masako and Hiroko)
Hachirouemon Sato Tamura?? <---I have no dates but believe his father was Samurai with the name Tamura.

Here is a picture of the family grave site. There are eight individuals buried there. I suspect that the ashes are in the granite box below the flowers. Their names are written on either side of the grave on the large black granite slab--seven names on one side and one name on the other. The eight sticks in the back of the large black granite stone with the family name have buddist chants/blessings written by the Obosan (buddist monk). Kazuteru San pays the Obosan to make new ones every year during the obon festival.

After a great stay in Tomobe, we returned to the Narita airport. We were a bit late, so they pinned a sticker of an airplane on us with our seat numbers. We were escorted through security and on to the Boeing 777. After departing at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, we got back into Albuquerque at about 8 pm on Wednesday. We were really in the air about 12 hours and were grateful for all of our blessings. What a great 25^th wedding anniversary trip and first foreign experience for Sam!