'That's why the temple is all the way out here, away from Downtown,' the woman, who had married a Japanese man and thus become a Buddhist, continues to tell me as we eat our lunch, 'because this was agricultural land, and the Japanese workers could afford it,'
During the service there had been a ribbon cutting event for a new kitchen and I had been invited to join the Buddhists for lunch in the big hall.
I am eating tofu in sesame seeds and white rice and a kind of vinegary cabbage salad that reminds of the sushi place where me and the wife had liked to eat in Hilo, Hawaii.
On the table in front of us are little paper cups of green tea and sake and non-alcoholic cider, so that when suddenly a man at the front of the hall begins talking into a microphone, we are ready to make a toast.
The man begins to talk about the building of the kitchen and how important fund raising had been and how the kitchen belongs to not just the temple, but to everybody.
And then he says '...and we couldn't have done it without the help of our builders, who will please stand up now,'
2 big Mexican looking guys stand up and one takes off his baseball cap and they both bow while everybody claps.
And then, when the toasts are over, there is much smiling and clapping and commemorative cake is passed out by smiling teenage girls and all of us are given a commemorative rice paddle with the words 'San Diego Buddhist Temple' burned into the handle.
On my way home on my bicycle, under an unintentionally vicious California sun, I think about how on this Sunday a random Australian was offered lunch by a bunch of predominantly Asian strangers, whose temple kitchen had been built by some Mexican construction workers on land that had once been considered by white men to be far enough away from them and theirs as to not cause offense.
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