Dear Bear friends:

Everything is topsy-turvy in the house on the hill! Soon, we will leave for Japan and Hong Kong. Everyone is packing their bags for the trip.

Miss Cynthia is packing her bag. She has a coffee pot and a hairbrush, a dress and some trousers, and me, Perry Bear Ewer!

Dear bear friends:

This is your friend, Perry, a bear in the air. I'm writing to you from somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. I can see land far off to the right of me: the coast of Washington State!

Dear bear friends

Our first day in Tokyo, and oh! so busy!

Miss Cynthia and I woke early. Even though the sun was not yet up, the streets of Tokyo were wide awake! Rivers of cars flowed through elevated freeways, snaked around tall buildings, backed up before stoplights at ground level.

Dear bear friends:

Have I introduced my good friend, Miss Brighid? Miss Brighid is Miss Cynthia's little girl, onlys he's not little! She's all grown up and goes to college. Miss Brighid is studying anthropology and she is VERY smart.

Miss Brighid has many friends among the Japanese exchange students at her university, and some of them have asked to receive my letters! This is very exciting: an American bear in Japan is writing to Japanese students living in the U.S.

Welcome to Hiroko, Shunsuke, Nao and Kanako--I hope you will correct me when I make a mistake!

Dear bear friends:

Perry Bear Ewer, your fashion trend reporter, here! After a day spent in the Harajuku district, I'm ready to share all the hottest Japanese fads and fashions.

Japanese schoolchildren work very hard at school. While American students go to school 180 to 190 days a year, the Japanese have a 220-day school year. That's six to eight more weeks of school, each year!

Dear bear friends:

We've had such fun in Tokyo! It's a big, bustling, modern city. There are many things to do and see, and the people of Tokyo are hip and stylish.

There is another Japan. A Japan that moves more slowly. A Japan that honors the past, and lives more closely to the land. We have been visiting there, and I can't wait to tell you about it!

Dear bear friends:

Perry Bear is now a poet! I have learned to write haiku a form of Japanese poetry.

Haiku has very simple rules. A haiku has three lines. It should contain one "season word" a word that evokes a season in nature. A season word can be a color, like green, or a natural phenomenon, like wind.

Haiku doesn't rhyme.

Dear bear friends:

When I travel with the San Francisco Symphony, I hear beautiful music.

Dear bear friends:

Hong Kong is a city at the center of the world!

During our visit to Japan, we saw very few non-Japanese people. As Americans (and as a teddy bear) we stood out in Japan. This was nice, in a way, because so many Japanese smiled just to see me and often, became my friend.

Dear bear friends: