Otherwise known as... My Japanese Mother
In July 1998, I moved to Japan for the first time. My boyfriend was attached to a ship based out of Yokosuka, which is about an hour southwest of Tokyo, on the coast. We had met when he was attending the Nuclear Power School in Orlando (thanks to my friend Amber, who had made me join her for Nickel Beer that night) After courtship, an amazing road trip up the eastern seaboard and across to California, a brief few months in Hawaii, and returning home to secure a teaching position in Japan, I found myself on a plane... to my first country outside of North America. (We had spent a few hours in Canada during the above amazing road trip but one can hardly count Niagara Falls as a foreign country!)
We stayed in the Hotel New Yokosuka for the first three months. It was situated close to the base where my officer-boyfriend was stationed, and was the easiest place for him to set up living arrangements before I arrived. It wasn't so bad. A maid came every day to clean the room, and I left for work in the morning and typically didn't get home until 10:30. I took four different train lines to get home, and had to run my legs off to make each train... or be stuck with waiting 15 minutes for the next train. Not appealing when you don't finish teaching until 9:10 p.m. The room was just a place to crash between workdays. The ship was out to sea most of the time so I didn't see "Scott" all that much. Still, it was a really incredible experience for a small town girl to find herself living such a cool, international life.
That October, once I'd settled in, I had a lesson with a lovely Japanese housewife. While I was teaching her, she asked me where I lived, and I told her.
Please, come to my house!
During the break between lessons, I told the teachers what the student had said.
Jen, who are you teaching?
Mrs. Nozawa.
She LOVES American girls. You are just like Susie and they were good friends. Susie had been a young Navy wife who had left our school before I arrived. It's okay.
When I returned to the room for our second lesson, I didn't mention the invitation. I still needed time to process. Typically, we were discouraged from seeing students outside of our lessons, unless it was at a school-sponsored party (we were paid to party with our students a few times a year) or students from our company lessons (where we would teach on-site at a company like Hitachi or Komatsu) would take us out to an izakaya, a Japanese pub, or karaoke.
I taught Mrs. Nozawa again a couple of weeks later. The last time I taught you, you mentioned getting together.
Please, come to my house! So, we arranged a time for me to come over for lunch. Mrs. Nozawa is the consummate Japanese housewife. She is beautiful, a true lady, and an amazing cook and housekeeper. Her husband is the president of a company that deals with sulfur as a by-product of oil. They have a fleet of ships. He is away on business a lot, but always brings home wonderful omiage, presents, in the way of food or other good things from where he has been. Mrs. Nozawa picked me up at the train station in her car, a black BMW, the first time I went to her home. I don't remember what she cooked for me, but I do remember that she had me sit at the counter while she cooked. My own mother hates to cook, so it was a new experience for me watching someone truly enjoy the act of preparing food. We drank Chianti, her favorite wine, and ate her delicious food. At the end of the afternoon we made plans to meet in Tokyo for dinner a few weeks after that with her husband, whose voice sounds like the Japanese James Earl Jones.
When we met in November, we had an amazing dinner, shabu shabu prepared with Kobe beef, and took a nighttime taxi tour of Tokyo. It was an incredible evening. I have it all on recorded on VHS for posterity. That video is currently sitting on top of the mostly unused television in my bedroom, but I haven't seen it in years. Mr. and Mrs. Nozawa (Yon-chan and Kazuo) don't have any children (but they do have a dog, Meri-chan) and they treated me like family the entire time I lived in Japan from 1998-1999, and they are the reason I moved back for another two years in 2001. I flew to visit them in the summer that year, when the school year ended in Florida, and they started working on me to move back as soon as I got off the airplane. When she took me back to my old school and there was a position open, it was all over. I moved back for good a month later, as soon as my work visa came through.
Yon-chan is the reason I became the home cook I am today. She taught me about fashion and all things good in Japan. She took me to Kyoto, Nagasaki, and Nikko and too many good restaurants to count. She is the reason I don't take sugar in my coffee (Dessert is sweet enough, Jen-chan!) and wear Mikimoto pearl earrings in my well-dressed lobes. I wear a large, simple pearl pendant around my neck every day-- Kazuo gave it to me for Christmas 10 years ago. Or was it Valentine's Day? I can't remember... all I know is that it is my talisman, and has been ever since I received it. Yon-chan is the reason I collect chinaware, and have the most incredible set (two sets, actually!) of cut glass cordials. We were the ultimate ladies who lunched. She taught me how to make gyoza, and miso soup, and she is the reason I have the best live shrimp story EVER.
Yon-chan also taught me the most polite form of Japanese. One time I was in a department store with my friend Miko, who was Japanese but spent her teenage years in Canada, and I asked the salesgirl a question. Miko turned to me surprised. Jennifer, I can't believe that was YOU! If I had my eyes closed I would have believed you were Japanese!
That was eight years ago. I'm a bit rusty now... not enough practice.
My grandmother passed away the same week that the earthquake/tsunami happened. Everyone kept asking me what I knew... I told them I had to get through the weekend before I could deal with what was happening to a country that irrevocably altered my soul. When the tragedy first happened I thought I might spend the summer there helping with the relief efforts, since I speak the language, but when the information about the faulty reactor started coming out... I couldn't go. I did make contact with my friends and they are all well. Everyone, that is, except Yon-chan. And I hate that. I don't have her email address!!!
As for my Japanese mother (who is in fact the same age as my father)... I haven't spoken to her in a couple of years, although I keep telling myself each weekend that this will be the weekend I actually write to her. I miss her and Kazuo terribly, and think of them every day. It's strange how we lose touch with people who mean so much to us. Her friendship is probably the most important of my life, in terms of the impact she has had on my character.
Maybe this will be the weekend.
8-13-11 Addendum: It was... the author mailed a letter to Yon-chan this past Monday.
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