One very important friend Eroshenko made during his early years in Japan was a well-known playwright, Akita Uzyaku. Eroshenko taught him Esperanto, but was repaid many times because Akita introduced the young Russian to many progressive intellectuals in Japanese society. The Esperanto movement in Japan had developed at this time to the point where it was possible to organise a national conference there in early 1916. (This was only the third Esperanto conference held in Japan and the previous one had occurred nine years earlier). Of course, Eroshenko made a notable contribution to this conference, making speeches and playing Russian folk songs while accompanying himself on the balaika. But although happy in Japan, earning money, teaching and making friends, Eroshenko was just too restless to stay in one place for very long.
In July 1916 he went to Bangkok with the intention of founding a school for the blind in Thailand, or Siam, as it was then called. I don't know what language he used to communicate with his contacts in Bangkok, but he managed somehow and probably there were Esperantists there at that time. (Having begun to learn theThai language myself, in preparation for my own return trip to Chiang Mai in February, I can assure my readers that Thai is a very difficult language - at least to me. It has five tones and a syntactical structure completely different from any Western language with which I am acquainted. The writing system too, although beautiful to look at, is very difficult to learn.)
Eroshenko must have managed to communicate in one way or another, however, because he stayed in Bangkok for six months, before moving on to Burma for a longer stay, working as a teacher in a school for the blind. Then from Burma, he went to India but, after only a short stay in Calcutta, he returned to Japan in July 1919.
