THE FINAL MONTHS IN CURASAO – AND THE MOVE TO HOLLAND

In January, Japan's ambassador to The Hague paid a formal visit to Curasao, as it formed part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. My wife and I treated the ambassadorial couple to an informal tropical dinner. They were very pleased and loved my favourite cocktail, pina colada. They made us promise to visit them in Holland after we had moved back there, in May.

Later that year, after we had returned to Holland, the ambassador organized a dinner party at their residence in our honour, together with his wife. They had taken the trouble to import a crateful of tinned piha colada as a special welcome to us. To my embarrassment, we lost our way driving over from The Hague to their residence in the wooded suburb of Wassenaar. True, there had been a rearrangement of the streets and traffic flow from what I remembered, but still, this was unforgivable, the more so as the ambassador knew that I had grown up in that very suburb! By the time we finally arrived, the cocktail hour was over and we had to go straight in to dinner. The evening never quite recovered from my faux pas. (More than thirty years later, I could belatedly apologize in person when I happened to meet the ambassador and his wife again at a meeting of the Japan-Netherlands Society in Tokyo. There were no hard feelings — just warm memories of their visit to Curasao back in 1979.)

The farewell party given us by the bank's staff was heart-warming and unforgettable. It was clear that our stay in Curasao had had the positive effect that I had hoped for, in which Toyoko had played her part by her genuine efforts to integrate with the local culture.

Back in Holland, we found a lovely house in the hills of Bloemendaal, a small town 40 km west of Amsterdam, not far from the North Sea. We were determined to make the best of this new chapter in our lives. Toyoko started to take Dutch lessons and tned to use her limited vocabulary when shopping in the neighbourhood.