**Sonoka Akita, Dale Mathews, and Yuki Suzuki in Utsunomiya! Akita-san and Suzuki-san are TGA’s colleagues who work at Utsunomiya City Hall**

**“Please come to Utsunomiya!”**

In March 2025, Mr. Yuki Suzuki, one of TGA’s counterparts who works in Utsunomiya City Hall, chaperoned our annual inbound delegation Utsunomiya students. Our visitors were able to experience Philbrook’s SAMURAI exhibit and promote the giveaway to Utsunomiya while they were in Tulsa.

**The Winning Ticket!**

Philbrook members Leah & Dale Mathews attended SAMURAI and entered to win a trip to Tokyo and Utsunomiya. Here’s Leah submitting the winning entry!

Leah & Dale were kind enough to share the following recap and photo gallery from their trip:

As the recipients of the winning ticket for a trip to Japan sponsored by Philbrook Museum and coordinated by Tulsa Global Alliance, we were ecstatic to get to Japan and explore as much as possible with our planned 10 days. We split our time between fast and furious Tokyo, charming Kyoto and Tulsa’s Sister City, the friendly Utsunomiya.

In Tokyo, we wanted to honor Philbrook with our trip so we found four museums to enjoy. The Aquarium Art Museum was our favorite because our eyes were stimulated by the goldfish and their aquariums, the very zen music being played and the air was filled with a hint of the freshest flowers. We also enjoyed the tiny but cute Fairy Museum in Utsunomiya, a high tech digital art museum called TeamLab Borderless and Mori Art Museum - an elegant and well thought out museum. And, while not a museum, we taxi’d to Reissue cafe that showcased an unusual form of art - 3D coffee foam. We enjoyed a pink raspberry latte with a terrific replica of our dog’s head billowing out of our coffee cups. Unique for sure. The museums were all different and all wonderful.

We ate at a completely automated sushi carousel as well as a fancy sushi place where, with chopsticks in hands, we tried sea urchin and a few unidentifiable raw fish. We also ‘enjoyed’ eating beef tongue (we thought we had ordered beef ribs!) and beef heart, checked out the Tsukiji Fish Market, shopped at Don Quixote’s Mega store, visited the Metropolitan Government Building’s light show where Pac-Man ate Tokyo, and saw Godzilla menacingly rising out the top of a tall hotel. We crossed at the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world - Shibuya Crossing, took the wrong train at the Tokyo Train station, tried to find our way out of Shinjuku station that has over 200 exits, got lost numerous times and loved every minute of it. We’re pretty sure we walked up and down a million stairs. We made a weekend trip to Kyoto and saw geishas and visited the Ryoan-ji Temple. Ryoan-Ji is an iconic Zen garden with raked pebbles and 15 randomly placed large rocks among them but notably, from any vantage point, you can only see 14 of them. This begs the question - what in life are we missing? Contemplative for sure.

Of course, we happily visited Tulsa’s Sister City, Utsunomiya, where we met Tulsa Global Alliance’s Japanese counterparts. It was great to be chauffeured around by locals where they practiced their English and we practiced our limited Japanese. Our first stop was the Wakayama Farm’s Bamboo Forest. It was a calming and beautiful place especially after the hustle of Tokyo. We then climbed the 97 (if I counted right) steps to the local Futarayama shrine whose picture is at Tulsa’s City Hall, met the people at UCIA (Utsunomiya City International Association) to exchange tokens representing our respective cities. Notably, they seemed to especially love our magnets with the tornados on them. For dinner, our hosts took us to a local gyoza restaurant. After all, Utsunomiya is known as the Gyoza Capital of Japan. Utsunomiya turned out to be a worthy and wonderful side trip!

Some other notable highlights: sparkling Sake (who knew?), Bento boxes for the trains, Hotel Mume in Kyoto, the regal Imperial Hotel, WE bread (white ear), 7-11, robots in grocery stores, Uniqlo’s flagship store, 20,000+ steps daily, omakase restaurant, the ‘yet undiscovered by tourists’ temple in Kyoto - Tijo-in Temple, and best of all, around every corner, we found something unique.

All in all, Philbrook and Tulsa Global Alliance have turned into our heroes. Thank you very much for the opportunity to engage with another culture and spread a little Tulsa cheer along the way.

Notably, we’re curious when the next contest is. We’re happy to again be Tulsa’s ambassadors anywhere you want to send us!

All the best,

Leah & Dale Mathews,