October 3, 2001: Old Town in DC
Today's breakfast was bread and vegetable salad. After it, I prepared some homepages. Then we all got on a taxi and headed to Alexandria, which is called "Old Washington." When we crossed Potomac River, I could witness many cranes in the forest of Pentagon. It was very hard to recall that many people were killed by a terror plane attack here.
Alexandria is a wonderful town with good red brick buildings in the thick green forest. I found many Stars and Stripes at every corned of the town.
We knocked one of the old doors of a street. The inside of the house is much spacious than expected. There are many wonderful art objects like those. On the shelf is Oriental Buddha statues and other collectables. This is the office of Mr. Sanders who is distinguished for his knowledge of Oriental arts.
The shelf keeps really unusual objects, "Fumie - stamping on a picture of Christ-" and guards of a sword with cross pattern. On the wall are many old maps. I found an old name of our Oita as Bungo and told him that we were from here. In the next room are many handcrafts of America Indian. I wondered why there are so many rooms. The answer is three old houses were connected into one to make a larger house. All the houses were built more than 200 years ago. I learned anew that American think much of old things. Mr. Sanders also told me that there are many restrictions in refurbishing old houses to keep the aroma of the old town.
We then visited a restaurant three blocks away. He said it was easy to reserve the seat in the famous restaurant because the number of the guest was reduced due to the terror attack. The left dish is white meat fish with dumpling lobster sauce. It is really tasty for its soft ball. The right dish is soft-shell crab salad. As the shell is broken in advance, it is easy to eat in whole. The taste was really crispy and mild. Both of them are very unusual, indeed.
We enjoyed a wonderful lunch with Mr. Sanders's experience in Mongolia and in Taiwan. The dessert was waiter-recommended apple pie. It was very nice as well.
We returned to the office and continued to look through his wonderful collection. I found Japanese Kimonos and belts. This is his office decorated with a flag that was used in his in active service days at US Office as an under secretariat.
He gave me a Mongolian cap and Chinese cut-paper as the memories of visiting his office today.
We looked around the old town guided by Mr. Sanders. He explained that Alexandria had once been the capitol of America before George Washington opened the Capitol. This is a small house in which Washington had lived 250 years ago. It is used as an ordinary house even today.
The beautiful City Hall are surrounded with beautiful flowers and a fountain. Many people enjoy a beautiful day in the square.
This is a fire department. The building was designed to match the older building next door. I found a black ribbon on the entrance of the building.
Stone pavement old slope remains as it is for 250 years. A car parking there has a number plate of "Old Town."
We said good-bye to Mr. Sanders. We then picked a taxi up and visited a waterfront of Potomac River. In the days of Washington, the river had a major roll in transportation, they say. A large pleasure boat is be berthed today.
In the evening, we visited George Town for dinner passing by a reservoir.
We enjoyed the dinner at a Japanese restaurant Makoto. Mr. Tsukamoto said it is very difficult to make a reservation here, a secret top restaurant in Washington DC. The guests soon filled the seat. We were the only one Japanese group. Behind the counter, Japanese cookers were making sushi rolls.
We ordered chef's recommendation dish. The appetizer is beautiful colored "White marinade of persimmon." Other guests in the restaurant take the marinade only, but we enjoyed whole persimmon.
As an entree, we ordered three kinds of buckwheat noodles, with grated radish, ground yam, and wild vegetable respectively. It was beyond my imagination that we could enjoy such complete Japanese food in an old town of Washington DC. Thank you very much, Mr. Tsukamoto.
