Hutt Club Members 14 June 2017.
Standing persons from left to right: Mr.Urahama, Mr.Kubo, Mr.Ichida, Mr.Kato, Ms.Higashi, Ms.Yamaoka, Mr.Kitamura, Ms.Kawabata
Sitting persons from left to right: Ken Katashiba, Mr.Kawashima, Ms.Rokkaku, Mr.Sato, Ms.Kimura, Ms.Toyoshima.
Hello everybody, I am very happy to be given a chance to say a few words at this special occasion.
I was the President of the Minoh Hutt Friendship Club (Hutt Club) for 12 years. During that time we initiated a few events such as ‘English Conversation Get-together’ with Kiwi teachers, ‘New Zealand Wine Tasting’, ‘New Zealand lamb cooking and tasting’ etc.
The culmination of these was to translate your history “Lower Hutt: The First Garden City” into Japanese and publish it. We got it done just last month. You must have seen it by now. We thought that in order to understand people with different culture deeply, we should know their history. We formed a translation team consisting of six club members. It took us three and a half years for translation and one more year for fundraising and publication. It was a big challenge for us.
Thank you very much for your big help. The Hutt Minoh House Friendship Trust gave NZ$2,000.00 donation to the project and we were taught lots of useful local knowledge by a few Hutt citizens.
It looks like the project was a joint-venture of the citizens of the two cities. After reading the book we now understand how your people have developed your community over nearly 200 years. Struggling to overcome each difficulty arising, you have never given up. It is a moving story. The title of the book “The First Garden City” sounds very attractive. Led by this concept we looked into the history of our own city and found that Minoh was also one of the first garden cities in Japan. What a coincidence! We were struck by this fact very much.
Now I really hope that both cities will endeavor to regain the old fame and become today’s garden cities. Congratulations on the 25th anniversary of our friendship.
Mr. Todd Sato
Former President of the Hutt Club
30 July 2020