Chapter 4

Mioko Fujiwara

I was thrilled ... Sato-sama was taking time off from his duties as a Japanesse Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer to visit me.

I should preface that with the fact... if he wanted to see me.

“Fifteen minutes is 15 minutes?” I was asking ... not that there was anybody to ask, I was kneeling at the doorway ... waiting. Today was day 21 ... three weeks ... earth days.

“No matter how long he’s here,” Eva Caretaker Coordinator said from behind me.

I jumped ... scared me, she did.

Eva was ‘traditional,’ she knelt beside me, “Ceiling-sama?”

“Hai.”

“Lovely home ... very 11th century,” Eva said.

“The research was enormous.”

The structure ... was some three to three and and a half hundred feet long and 100 feet wide. the interior would have been instantly recognized as the domicile of Samurai of some standing. It was ‘walled’. however the ‘walls’ comprised the outside perimeter of the buildings inside the wall.

IF ... if the whole shebang had been built outdoors ... so to speak. Ceiling has done ‘it up brown,’ as the saying goes. The interior was traditional ... the exterior? nobody saw the exterior.

JW and Sato-san saw the change immediately. The white hallway on the Crossroasd side was ‘double wide’ and about 20 feet deep. The door at the end was of very ornately carved dark stained polished teak with a small high up barred sliding panel behind the bars. The panel slid open and shut faster than a ninja could throw a shuriken. The sounds of bars raised and chains rattling ... the door opened.

We stepped through ... JW was gone.

Kneeling were two women with heads to the floor.

“Welcome home, Sato-sama,” greeted the elder. She stood. “I am the nakodo the ‘go-between,’ Please allow me to present Mioko Fujiwara, as a possible prospective house keeper.”

Pure formality ... but traditional.

“Stand up, girl,” Eva said. “He cannot examine you down there.”

Mioko stood, Sato pushed up her face with a finger to her chin.

“Very nice,” he told the nakodo. “The rest?”

Eva gestured, Mioko blushed and dropped her robe.

“Yes,” Sato-sama said. Eva departed.

She was a work of art ... well ... work of Sam.

Mioko dressed.

“Show me the house.”

To the right of the door was a fortified room that would hold a pair of Samurai ‘door guards.’ This was Crossroads ... no guards.

Left was a long narrow set of covered rooms with doorways and window openings ... If Sato were married or had consorts, his sons, their tutor and his troops would live there.

The room doors opened on an open courtyard of some 15 to 18 feet, trees at either end. The courtyard stretched the full length of the exterion ... less 4 feet on either end ... a long hall on each end connected the front and back wall.

The right hand hall had only doors opening to the interior. Mioko conducted Sato-sama through to the rear.

The rear was similar to the front ... except the rooms were larger ... his daughters and consorts would live there.

An atteched leanto style barn behind the back wall housed his animals, his ‘hands’ and their wives. The ‘hands’ were of lower classes ... not samurai. Behind the leanto was bamboo and beyond the bamboo was forest.

In front of the back building was a larger open courtyard with a hot water pool in the middle and his Japanese garden on either side.

Next came his house ... bedroom to the left, wives to the right, state rooms in the middle. Kitchen house forward and right of a large courtyard and training area. To the left of the courtyard was the guest house. Opposite his house ... on the other side of the cortyard was another, but smaller house ... for ‘just in case.’ All the buildings facing the courtyard had porches ... some as wide as 15 feet.

When Mahiro was throughly lost, Mioko led him back to his master sleeping room and dropped her robe.

“Shuck it,” she said.

Then she helped.

Wheedoggies!