The contacts between Japan and Turkey and the Ertugrul frigate disaster resulted in the founding of deep, long-term personal relations, capitalized by the arrival in 1892 of young Yamada Torajiro (1886–1957), who was the pioneer of Turkish-Japanese relations and the first Japanese expert in Ottoman Turkish. Furthermore, the journalist Noda Shotaro of the Jiji Shibo paper of Japan, is also said to have started teaching Japanese in the Ottoman Military Academy to Turkish cadets for the first time. Yamada, who was one of the sons of Karoo of the Numata domain in Gumma prefecture, was a typical cultured young man of the Meiji era who wanted to see the world. Encouraged by the foreign ministry of Japan Aoki Shuzo, Yamada became the informal ambassador between Japan and Turkey after he and his partner Nakamura Kenjiro, of Osaka, established the first Japanese import-export firm: Nakamura Shoten. Upon his first visit, Yamada had the privilege of a private audience with the Sultan and members of the Ottoman government when he presented the 5,000 Yen (a very large sum for those days) of Mimaikiin, which was condolence money collected in a widely-publicized campaign throughout the major cities of Japan. While Yamada lived in Istanbul for many years until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he began to develop Japanese–Turkish business. At the same time, he began setting up his main store in Cite de Pera, which was the first modern business center located along the Pera avenue of today's Beyoglu in the center of Istanbul. The building known as Cicek Pasaji, or Flower Market, still stands today, serving as a popular restaurant location. Later in the Republican era, many Turks will remember the Japanese toy store which was located in the same place after Yamada turned his business over to a local organization. After he returned to Japan, Yamada wrote various attractive essays on the contemporary cosmopolitan Istanbul. As an initial description, he claimed that “ten thousand nations can be seen walking across Galata Bridge on the Golden Horn.” His writing reflected Turkish culture with its rich and diverse heritage spanning back to the Islamic, Byzantine and Roman legacies. One significant book of Yamada's, “Toruka Gakan” (A Pictorial Look at Turkey ), published in Tokyo in 1911, shows us, in Yamada's own accomplished drawings, the everyday life of the imperial capital and the famous monuments of the city. Today in Topkapi Palace, we can still see Yamada's family armor and sword from the 16 th century, which he gave as a present to Sultan Abdulhamid II upon his arrival in Istanbul. Throughout his life, Yamada continued to be active in Japanese-Turkish relations as a friend of Turkey. He visited Ankara as a part of the official Japanese delegation under Prince Takamatsu in a 1931 meeting with the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He also founded the first Japanese-Turkish business association of Japan. The grandson of Yamada Torajiro, who heads the Tea Ceremony school of the family, has also continued his grandfather's role by being a vigilant and supportive friend of Turkey.