Beginning of the Journey

Welcome to the first article in my “Foreign Mother in Japan” series! Living abroad in a foreign country is not always easy, nor does it always feel rewarding, nevertheless, it is what we make it, combined with what the country makes of us. Raising children in a culture so very different from my own, I’ve found I’ve had to cope with adjusting to policies and ways of thinking that go completely against my own, and I’ve had to learn when to speak up and insist that something be done differently.

Though the birth of my eldest daughter, Janina, 13 years ago could mark the beginning of this path, I believe the true beginning was when she entered kindergarten at 6 years old. This was when I was faced with the true differences in my culture vs. the culture I was living in, and it is something I face every day I wake up and send my kids to school, every time I interact with the local mothers, every time I talk with my English students.

I find I have developed a love-hate relationship with this country, and it’s hard to say which is stronger. I am often asked “Are you used to Japan?” I never quite know how to answer that question. At what point did I stop getting used to the country and the country became a part of me? The better question would be when I visit California—“Are you used to America?” to which I could quickly reply, “Not really.” But am I used to Japan? Yes, no, sometimes, never and always.

I’m used to the weather, the seasons, the sound of the language, the habits of the Japanese, the groceries in the stores, the cars on the roads, the little neighborhoods, the rice-patties, downtown, crowded trains and being stared at everywhere I go. But more than being used to it, it is part of me and I am part of it, no matter how much I stand out.

Fortunately I’m short and my hair is dark, so if I wear sunglasses, long sleeves and pants, and speak Japanese I can occasionally get away with being Japanese, but remove the layers and I suddenly find myself a magnet for attention. Through the years I have learned to deal with it graciously, but there have been moments of pure hatred, when I locked myself up in the house and refused to go shopping, dreading the moment I stuck my foot out the door, when I have glared in anger at anyone who tried to approach me to speak English, and other times when I have played it up and loved the false glamour being white gave me. And now, now I mostly ignore it, I put my chin up in the air and pretend I’m as normal as the guy next to me.

How did I come to this country? It’s a long story in detail, as is any, but the short version is I was the child of a missionary and came in my late teens. I spent the next 10 years working with foreigners, teaching their children, caring for my own siblings, before I married Toru and we began our own.

And so the journey began.