Rengay Through the Seasons #21 [1]

by Toshiaki Koike (tk), and Vaughn Seward (vs);
Rengay #21 (Jan 20-26, 2008) Verse 1 (of 6):

Icy Road — a plastic bag rolls, right, left. /tk

This rengay was written with Toshiaki Koike who was born in Iwakura, a town near Nagoya, Japan. Toshiaki attended Shizuoka University where he studied Japanese Literature and was the leader of the University's haiku circle. It was there that he met his future wife Carol who had come to Japan from Canada as an exchange student. Through a later exchange of tanka and haiku poems a romance developed and they were eventually married. Ten years later they moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where Carol's mother was living. Their story is more fully described here:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~publicas/folio/34/20/06.html

Masago met Toshiaki at the 2006 Edmonton Summer Arts Festival where Toshiaki was displaying some of his artwork. They became fast friends and have been meeting regularly every two weeks since then to discuss English language, Japanese language & culture, and haiku poetry.

Click here for the previous rengay in the series.