From: OKADA Shigeho <???????????????????????????>
Subject: Re: Pipes Digest: Japanese club forming

Morning, Steve,

Thanks for copying me an e-mail from Mr. Drapp.  Incidentally,
I was just starting to get in touch with another Japanese pipe
smoker on-line, Mr. Seiichi Namba (I don't think he's on the
PD, but contributes to a.s.p. from time to time), after seeing
his posting to the fj.rec.smoking (in Japanese) asking about
fellow pipe smokers.  Mr. Namba, although I have yet to see
him in person, has some twenty or so years of pipe smoking
experience, and is very fond of English style blends.  (He is
also very active in the Linux on-line community here).  The
initial motive of my getting in touch with Namba-san is to
look for the possibility of establishing a mailing list of/for
pipe smokers here, something very similar to PD, in the
Japanese language.

And through Mr. Tarler of C&D, I've started to correspond with
Mr. James Baldwin, Craig's customer in Japan and a college
lecturer of American origin living in Japan.  With Jim, I'm
planning a get-together some time in late this year or early
next year, since he's currently busy occupied by the idiotic
Japanese bureaucracy <g>.

Probably Mr. Drapp can join us somewhere in this scheme of
things (Ah, BTW, does he smoke pipe as well?  We have very few
native cigar smokers in Japan).  The pipe smokers in Japan
are, as Namba-san once wrote to me, an endangered spieces,
with very little info and high pricing of both tobaccos and
pipes.  I'll write directly to Andrew-san, and I promise to
follow up on the future development back to you personally and
probably on to the PD as well.

Regards,

              *----------------------------------------------------*
               OKADA Shigeho @ Meteorological College, Chiba, Japan
               ??????????????????????????? (Okada is my family name)


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