TURTLE MEAT

Not to make light of a serious event -- well maybe a little -- but, where is Gamera when we need him? Or her?

In 1989, on a flight back from Tokyo on JAL, I was privileged to have a window seat in business class on the 747. My aisle-seat companion was a very tall attractive young Japanese man who was on his way to a conference on rocket propulsion in Waikiki. Really. During the flight he was studying a Japanese-English dictionary of rocket science terms. Sometimes it IS rocket science. We got to talking after comparing notes about some curious tropical and Asian fruits on offer in the in-flight magazine/catalog. (Who would send their friends a durian?)

The gentleman offered his business card to me. I still have it somewhere, and until this moment I could remember his name, very lyrical. He was with Mitsubishi Aerospace. Like a stupid person, I said, "How interesting, I just bought a new Mitsubishi car." (It turned out to be a piece of junk.)

He turned in his seat, hands clasped, and bowed to me. "Thank you for buying our product," he said. I can't imagine a Chrysler space systems employee ever doing that to a Japanese person proud of his new Dodge RAM. (If there was such a person.) In the course of 89,000 miles, I always thought of Mr. Matsuzaki (or maybe that was his first name) when I drove past Pearl Harbor in that car.

He went on to talk about Star "Tlek." Who was my favorite character? He liked Dr. McCoy. I would have thought Scotty would have been his idol. (I was personally in a Kirk place at the time, not an Ohura.) "Do you like Godzirra movies?" he asked. Sure, I liked Godzilla, and Gamera. All those Japanese monster movies parodied on MST3K.

Then, very serious, he said, "I wonder about Godzirra. Was he a boy or a girl? He had a child. But I wonder. How could he have a baby?" This was one of the strangest encounters I have ever had on an airplane. At first I thought maybe he was hitting on me, but not. He was seriously interested in sci-fi and the reproductive nature of Godzilla.

Today, I wonder how he's doing. Did Mr. Matsuzaki get a family? Is he a salaryman with Mitsubishi? A scientist working on programs and products? Have any friendly creepy monsters come to rescue him and his friends during tidal wave/earthquake/nuclear failures? The images of the first surge over Honshu sure looked like "toy boats" being hurled around in a Godzilla vs. Gamera movie.

Where are the saving monsters to clean up the mess, pick up these toy boats?

UPDATE (3/20): After a futile search looking for the business card of Mr. Matsuzaki, the name magically comes to my mind: Nobuaki. Nobuaki Matsuzaki. What a lovely, poetic name to remember over more than 20 years.