1. (1) Those Sweet Women in Cuernavaca

2. (2) Esperantists in Cuernavaca

(1) Those Sweet Women in Cuernavaca

I have traveled in the US and Canada for more than five months in total. However, I couldn't make friends with women in these countries, although I had two old friends whom I met in Japan, Katica in Montreal and Tiffany in Dallas.

After entering Mexico, the same situation lasted. I had made a busy trip in the US and Canada. Also in Mexico I had to hurry to Cancun in the Yucatan Peninsula to see one of my friends who would visit me there from Japan on Christmas Day. I was not a traveler, but a tourist. However, after leaving Cancun I was able to make a trip that I had wanted. I moved slowly, taking much time. As a result it took one and a half months to travel the distance of only 2000 km from Cancun to Cuernavaca near Mexico City.

On the way I met Billy in Veracruz and stayed in his apartment as a guest for more than a week. My personal computer had revolutionary improvements there. I, on the other hand, had had a few opportunity to talk with women, except the angels at bars.

He told me they would have a weekly meeting of Esperantists at an Internet cafe' close to the hotel where I stayed on the following day. I went there. In the cafe' I couldn't connect my computer with its LAN, however, I was able to use the telephone line. I visited the cafe' every day to email and to download the songs of Sarah Vaughan, the singer I liked most before Mariko Takahashi. There, a young Japanese woman, who had worked for the UNICEF after the graduation from a university in the US, walked in. She told me that the person she was talking to was her teacher of painting. The name of the teacher was Carmen. She was from Peru. She taught painting at a college in Cuernavaca. She was a director of documentary movies in Peru before and had visited that Machu Picchu more than 70 times. The pictures on the walls of the cafe' were all her pieces of work. Her works were mostly concrete paintings, yet, not like photographs, but unique pictures to show the scenery of her mind. There was certainly her world in those pictures. I like the pictures like hers better than those like photographs. Carmen had moved from Peru and been in Mexico for four years. She told me she had taken part in the restoration of the pyramids in the vicinity of Cuernavaca. She is a multitalented person. Carmen likes traveling and wants to visit Japan. We Japanese Esperantists try to take care of the Esperantists from foreign countries as much as possible. So I recommended Esperanto to her. Diego, a young Mexican man also has a keen interest in Japan and he can write even Chinese characters. I suggested two of them to come to the weekly meeting of the Esperantists in Cuernavaca held every Thursday. They showed up as they promised. Especially the artist Carmen and the translator Jorge, who is supposed to be one of the best Esperantists in Mexico, seemed to like each other. It was a beautiful scene to me.

After the meeting of Esperantists I escorted Carmen to her apartment near the Zocalo to know the way as I was invited to her place on the following day. She lived with her son who is married and has a child. Both of the son and his wife are really good people. Carmen suggested me to go to a party of her friends. After I had a banana, we left her place. There were about ten people including a young couple at the party. Most of them were senior and all seemed to be decent people. Among them there was a inspired woman and she said that she saw a strong aura protecting me like guardian spirit. While I was talking to other people for an hour and a half, Carmen and the inspired woman left the table. The two women came back soon later and Carmen told me that the inspired woman wanted to give me a message. I moved to the seat next to her. She hold my both hands with her fingers and told my fortune. She said to me that I would find out a pyramid that I am looking for during the travel. I didn't understand the meaning of the "pyramid" . She explained that it was a spiritual thing. I myself didn't knew about either what I was looking for in the journey, or what it was. I committed myself to an environment-related work at a government for a long time, yet, I lost the meaning of what I was doing in the end. Accordingly, I quit the job. I had a long-time belief that the purpose of life is not only in work. I thought, in addition, the life left for me wouldn't be long. Nonetheless, I was passing the time meaninglessly every day. I thought I would have to see the different world. This was maybe my motive to start the journey. If I am allowed to make a high-sounding expression, this may be the journey for me to find the meaning of a short life that I live. If the pyramid that the inspired woman said symbolizes it, it will be a great thing to me. However, I don't know either what to know or what to want yet. But I know it is neither work nor money. I don't want either a big house, or a car. I didn't want either fame or honor from the beginning What I want is perhaps the love form others. And, although I feel a little ashamed of confessing this, the love that I want concretely and certainly is, at the moment, the one from a woman. Before leaving Japan, I said to some of my friends half as a joke, "I will kill my engine of my bike when I meet a good woman". To tell the truth, this was not a joke, but probably my honest feeling.

The inspired woman continued her fortunetelling. My traveling route is already determined by someone and I will meet an old man with long, white goatee, who will help me. Her following fortuntelling is really shocking to me. Surprisedly enough, she says that I will meet a woman I am looking for in a year and have two of my own children. I tell her, " I want a woman, but not children". She answers that it will be my fate. She continues more. I will not go back to Japan any more. However, this is what I want. Even if I want, I will not able to feed myself with an insufficient pension in Japan, where I do not have my own house. Besides a woman, the direct reason why I left on a trip is to find a place to live in somewhere out of Japan. I really wish that this fortune will be realized. If it happens in a year, I will be in Guatemala or South America. I will never care if my journey around the world ends there. I now don't know what kind of woman I am looking for. Will Toru have the last love then? I hope the woman is a good woman. But, I don't want children. If possible, will someone can change only this part of her fortunetelling? I escorted Carmen to her apartment again. The full moon was shining in the sky. She said, "I will remember you whenever I see the full moon every month. So you also remember me". To tell you the truth, she is also a poet. She is somehow a person whose mind is open to the end of the universe. Thanks to her my mind was also opened. I gave her a hug from me for the first time in my life.

(2) Esperantists in Cuernavaca

As I was traveling with haste in the US and Canada, I met Esperantists only once in Toronto. I didn't have enough time either even after the entrance to Mexico, because I had to reach Cancun in the Yucatan Peninsula before Christmas. When I arrived in Cancun, I found the email address of the Mexican Esperanto Federation on the Internet and sent the message that I wanted to make a contact with Esperantists in Mexico. I soon received a reply from Jorge Luis Gutierrez in Cuernavaca near Mexico City. Jorge wrote that he would be waiting for me. I wanted to take my time for traveling, not being pushed by the schedule, after Cancun. I left Cancun on the 3rd of January and arrived in Cuernavaca on the 18th of February. I spent a month and a half in traveling only 2000 km. Cuernavaca is located less than 100 km south of Mexico City and is reportedly the city where the people who want to escape from the crowded, noisy capital move to live or make a short trip. In the city there are lots of Spanish and English schools, and so lots of foreign tourists. It is a hilly city and the up-and-down streets are bending like a labyrinth in the one-way traffic system. I asked the way many times on the way to my hotel and I was once very close to the hotel. But I passed the area. After that I lost my way many times and at last I arrived at the hotel near the square. Although in the Yucatan Peninsula it was cloudy and the temperature was rather low most days, in Cuernavaca the sky was clear and the temperature was high. When I rode into the courtyard of the hotel, the shirt under the leather jacket was soaked with sweat.

As soon as I arrived the hotel, I phoned to Jorge from a pay phone on the street. The line was busy. I supposed he was connecting the Internet. I phoned again in the evening. He answered that time. "Saluton (Hello), Jorge! Mi estas Toru". I spoke these phrases well. But, the next words came first in Spanish, not in Esperanto. In addition to my poor understanding of Esperanto, because of the noise from the cars on the street I couldn't understand almost anything that Jorge was talking. I expected it would be easier to have a conversation in a quieter place and I asked him to call me back later to the hotel. I gave him an unnecessary trouble. I am afraid he was embarrassed by my inability.

Two days later Jorge came to my hotel to give me a ride in his car. He told me he would treat me to dinner in his place. I asked him to let me use the telephone of his place so that I could connect my computer with the Internet. In Mexico local calls are free till 200 times. Nonetheless, hotels charge 60 cents per minute, even if telephone is available there. In the cheap hotels where I stay, however, the telephone cannot be used because they have only one line. So, I often used a public telephone house on the street, but in Cuernavaca there wasn't even the telephone house. In the case like that, I usually took my computer that can deal with Japanese language to a cybercafe, but the computer often couldn't be connected with the LAN. As this worried me, the Jorge's telephone was very helpful to me.

Jorge's house was located in the suburbs of Cuernavaca on the way to Mexico City in the north. We went there in his red Volkswagen. The house was in the beautiful village surrounded by low mountains. A big wooden gate like that of a fort was found at the entrance of the village with around 20 cozy houses. I was surprised to see a man taking care of opening and closing the gate. In the house there were lots of books on the bookshelves. Not a few English books were also there among them. He answered to my question that he was a journalist and at the same time a translator of English. Our conversation easily went to the matters of languages. I was able to imagine most of what he was talking, but I couldn't understand fully. He spoke fluent Esperanto. That made it more difficult for me, poor speaker of Esperanto, to understand on the contrary. And, lots of Spanish words were mixed in my Esperanto. Jorge consoled me, saying that even Mexicans often got confused because the two languages are too similar to each other. I now remember that Mr. Hirai of Osaka Esperanto Society, who is an interpreter and translator of Spanish and who speaks fluent Esperanto, also used, in times, Spanish words in his Esperanto conversation. However, in my case it was too much and terrible. Facing this, Jorge kept smiling a warm and friendly smile on me. When I met Esperantists in Toronto, at least the Esperanto words that I knew came into my brain more rapidly, because I had completely forgotten Spanish then. I have been speaking Spanish every day during more than the past three months in Mexico, even though I have forgotten most of the language. So, Spanish words come out more rapidly than Esperanto words, even if they are very simple words. This was one of the reasons that I quit learning Spanish soon after I began to learn Esperanto. When I talked about Esperanto to the young Mexican whom I met in Cuernavaca, I gave him an example of Esperanto sentence, "Mi havas unu cigaredon en la mano". He told me he understood. To take an example, using this sentence, I was probably talking to Jorge as "Mi tengo un cigarillon en la mono".

Jorge had a work relating the Internet from its birth due to his occupation as a journalist. From this reason he knew a lots about the Internet, although he was not young. He also knew the software to download music and dictionaries, and I was able to download some in his house. Besides, it worried me for a long time that proper Esperanto letters were not used in my Web site, and I had an idea I would change them some day if possible. But five and a half months had passed in vain while I couldn't find the way to do so. I showed my Esperanto pages to Jorge. He immediately wrote the Unicodes on a piece of paper, changed some improper letters in my home page with the Unicoded alphabets, and showed me the proper Esperanto alphabets appear in the screen. "Seeing is believing". It doesn't take long time to change the codes, if the replacing function of the "Microsoft Wordpad" is applied. Concerning the Unicodes, I had known about it, to tell the truth, having already been informed by Scott, an Esperantisto in Toronto. That time, immediately after I heard about the codes, I asked him to give his program to change the codes to me, not listening to his explanation well. Our conversation went to a wrong way and became complicated. As a result, my Esperanto pages have kept substitutionary way of writing Esperanto alphabets for a long time. After leaving the Jorge's place that day, I changed the alphabets in most parts of my Web pages till three in the morning in the hotel, and finished the work the following day. In this point it was also fruitful that I met Jorge.

I met a Mexican young man, Diego in the same restaurant. I met Carmen in the cybercafe of the Esperanto meeting. Diego likes Japan so much that he calls himself as a Japan freak, and he has been learning Japanese, dreaming of visiting Japan some day. He can write even Chinese characters. According to him, the first word he learned was difficult Chinese characters meaning "devil". He uses a Japanese family name of Takahara as a pen name. He told me that he wanted to take a test for the "Kashima Antlers" of the Japan Football League. On the other hand, Carmen has already lived in Mexico for four years since she moved from Peru. She is a painter and, according to her, she was invited to an exposition of paintings in Spain before. She now teaches painting at a university in Cuernavaca. Carmen is a multitalented person and she is a poet at the same time. Before she came to Mexico, she was a director of documentary films in Peru and she visited the famous Incan ruin Machu Picchu more than 70 times. She told me that she had made a business trip to the Amazon two times together with Jacques Cousteau, the famous adventurer of the sea. She also took part in the restoration of the pyramids near Cuernavaca. She also told me she wanted to visit Japan. So, I recommended learning Esperanto to the two people, saying that Japanese Esperantists were waiting for the visit of foreign Esperantists and would surely welcome them. The two of my friends answered me they would learn Esperanto on the spot.

My two friends soon appeared in the same weekly meeting of the Esperantists in Cuernavaca held on every Thursday. The previous week the meeting had only two members, giving somewhat slack impression, but that week more members, Ramon and two other women, Sofia and Cecilia, besides Jorge, came to the meeting. These three people who newly came also gave me an impression of intelligent people. In addition, as Carmen and Diego joined them, the meeting was very busy. At the end of the meeting, Carmen read her poem. At that time, the people playing with the PC's for the Internet behind her applauded her poem, clapping their hands loudly. I was deeply impressed. But unfortunately, I didn't understand the meaning of her Spanish poem. The meeting also helped me learn Spanish and I really enjoyed it. According to Jorge, the Esperanto group of Cuernavaca has members of three men and three women. I met most of them except one woman. I wish from the bottom of my heart that my friends Carmen and Diego will keep learning Esperanto with the six and visit Japan to see the Esperantists there some day. Next to Toronto I touched the warm and fervent heart of Esperantists in Cuernavaca. For a traveler who wanders around unknown countries, the existence of Esperantists in every part of the world seems to be just like an island in the vast ocean. When you arrive there, you can enjoy security as you are at home and forget the loneliness in traveling.