Posted on 11/14/2010 11:16:58 AM PST by STARWISE
President Obama reacquainted himself with a piece of his childhood on Sunday before heading back to Washington at the end of his nine-day, four-country trip across Asia.
Obama visited the Great Buddha in Japan's small coastal city of Kamakura.
He had stood in front of the imposing bronze statue, one of this country's most famous sites, as a 6-year-old boy. His mother had brought him there and then taken him for green tea ice cream, a memory he has reflected on fondly.
“It is wonderful to return to this great treasure of Japanese culture,” Obama wrote in a guest book at the temple. "Its beauty has stayed with me for many years."
The sacred statue of Amida Buddha is nestled in the hills around the Buddhist temple of K?tokuin. Dating to the 1200s, it’s roughly 40 feet tall and weighs about 100 tons.
Obama’s return to the site capped an overseas trip that was both business and personal.
From India to Indonesia to Japan, the president folded in stops that went beyond the state visits and global economic summits that brought him.
In Mumbai he visited a house where Mahatma Gandhi lived. Martin Luther King, Jr. had toured the home in 1959, signing the guest book just as Obama did last weekend. King and Gandhi are two of the president's biggest heroes.
In New Delhi, Obama walked the grounds of Humayun's Tomb. "Spectacular," he remarked as he left.
While he didn't stop at any of his childhood haunts in Jakarta, where he lived for four years, Obama said he found it "a little disorienting" to return to a modernized city he remembered for streets crowded with becaks and bemos when he moved there with his mother in 1967.
"I feel great affection for the people here,” he said at a news conference shortly after arriving. “The sights and the sounds and the memories all feel very familiar."
At the Great Buddha on Sunday, Obama told his guides about how he visited the statue with his mother when he was 6.
"I was this big," he said, holding his left hand at his waist to explain how small he was back then.
This time he gazed up at the statue, surrounded on three sides by low, tile-roof buildings, as president. He was shown around the site by the director of the Kotokuin Temple, Michiko Sato, and, Dr. Takao Sato, the temple’s 15th chief monk.
He sampled a green tea ice cream bar, like he had 43 years ago, and bought a pair of bracelets for his daughters at the gift shop.
Much of the town turned out to see the presidential motorcade wind through a small fishing village, past clusters of grocery stores and a group of surfers paddling around in the ocean.
At an ice cream store, a "Welcome President Obama" sign was hung over the door.
Before he flew to Kamakura, Obama wrapped up the two-day summit of Asian Pacific leaders. He will host APEC in his home state of Hawaii next year.
Ann Dunham Soetoro travels from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Jakarta, Indonesia, via Japan Airlines, using U.S. Passport No. 777788, documented by a request by Dunham Soetoro to obtain an exception allowing her to travel on an expired passport. The request was granted by the State Department Oct. 21, 1971.
Barack Obama accompanies his mother, traveling as a child named on her U.S. Passport No. 777788. Obama incorrectly identifies the 1967 flight with his mother to Indonesia as being on a Pan Am jet, and he recalls a three-day stopover in Japan (Source: Dreams from My Father, page 31). State Department records list no other travel to Indonesia by Dunham Soetoro from 1967 to 1971
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Missed that he had been to Japan with his mother when he was 6. He sure got around.
.. Ping!
Where did his mother get the money for all the travel she did?
It costs $ to have nannies, caretakers, and travel the world.
He sure wasn't a poor commoner like he wants people to believe.
Dude, your karma sucks.
Lucky if you're reincarnated as a mailman.
Did he visit China first? He's walking kind of funny...
He looks like a super thin Frankenstein there. What is going on with his weight?
Oh well, I guess as long as it’s not a statue of Jesus he’s fine with the fond memories.
Wow, STARWISE. Just went to the link you posted. I am quite convinced he is hiding things about his upbringing. So very weird and maddening. But what is new when you are talking about BHO?
” Obama said he found it “a little disorienting” to return to a modernized city he remembered for streets crowded with becaks and bemos when he moved there with his mother in 1967.”
Was it disorienting when he moved to Indonesia as an adult ?
It drives me crazy that only Jim Geraghty at NRO
and Jack Cashill are the only members of the media to wonder about
Barry and Michelle’s ex pat days as adults in Indonesia.
The rest of the media continues to ignore what Barry’s sister told the New York Times in 2008.
“ His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said he eventually retreated to Bali for several months with his wife, Michelle,
“to find a peaceful sanctuary where there were no phones.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/politics/18memoirs.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Of course, the excuse that a nobody , in pre cell phone days ,
having to flee ringing house phones that could easily be unplugged.. to finish a book he didn’t author ....makes no logical sense.
We can only surmise what the real reasons were for Barry and Michelle decamping to Indonesia
for “ several months.”
And where they actually lived.
Bali sounds so bucolic , so much nicer than saying they moved back to Jakarta.
I think that’s the real reason they did the Indonesian drive by ,
they didn’t want people who knew them from the 1990s popping up.
He had stood in front of the imposing bronze statue, one of this country's most famous sites, as a 6-year-old boy.
Boy, he sure got around. Elsewhere, they discuss how people forgot that BHO escaped to Bali to work on his memoirs.
I think Obama’s stay on Bali as an adult was when he was trying to write his first book.
Thought I read where they lived off welfare, studet grants.
Read where she was trying to join her second husband and had trouble with authorization to join him because of lack of funds on his part and hers. The country (Indonesia) made them show they could support themselves before she was allowed to enter the country.
Side trips to Japan??? Someone with a lost of dough has been taking care of lil’ Barry for a long time.
Little rich turd
A 40 year old writing his "memoirs", let alone two biographies.....
.....Pretty queer if you ask me.
It's as if he thinks he is some sort of superior minded adult and doesn't have to wait for the old part of "old and wise".
Do you think that Obysmal could dress like a respectful adult when he’s representing America in foreign countries and maybe put on a tie? I wonder if he puts his feet on the furniture there too.
Did he bow to the Buddha?
For the first time in my life I’m embarrased and/or ashamed to be an American with this pathetic, fake, fraud, phony POS putz as POTUS/TOTUS.
He’s a mole and his whole background has been obscured. Thanks Congress for the thorough vetting /s
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