As I understood it later, Taiji was supposed to have entered the U.S. with a student visa. However events overtook the paperwork, and he arrived on a thirty day tourist visa. The clock was running while he toured Washington and visited New York City. Sensei and Taiji went to Florida and Disney World. I'm sure there were a million small adjustments that father and son had to make after six years of separation--among other things, Taiji had to be introduced to the part that Patty played in Sensei's life--and all this took precedence over forms and filings. By the time that I finally understood that Taiji would be an illegal alien when his tourist visa expired, there were less than two weeks left to do something (what?) before Taiji could be deported.

I suddenly became very responsible.

I found the right forms and we applied for a student visa for Taiji. Then we went to the county school department to see about registering him. For a time it looked like it would cost three thousand dollars for tuition (Sensei was still very poor), but some piece of paperwork clicked and he was enrolled as an ordinary student in the non-English speakers transition program. Another one of Sensei's students, Andy, (who became my friend partly from this shared work), helped with the formal translation of documents.

After about three months, Taiji's student visa request was denied because we had been several days late in filing it. I did some research and we filed an appeal.

I shared a lot of meals with Sensei and Patty and Taiji. After eating we sat usually around Sensei's table of two-by-fours and talked about Aikido, the meaning of life, and some step in the process of dealing with the immigration or school authorities. Often I had forms that needed filing. Patty and I would help each other to get the needed information from Sensei. Neither of us was ever one hundred percent sure of Sensei's English so we often repeated and paraphrased one another. Also, the differences between Japanese and American record keeping sometimes left us uncertain whether something like Sensei's "family register" was the appropriate official substitute for a "birth certificate."

While we waited to hear from the immigration authorities, Taiji's English got better. At some point Sensei said: "Lou, you helping Taiji with school," and I officially became one of Taiji's tutors. Though I don't think I spent more than an hour every week or two doing anything academic with Taiji, I came to know him. We shared more meals.

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