Part 1:
U Turn to Japan

When I came up with the idea of making U-turn to Japan, I thought I better go slow and proceed with caution. I decided to stay for several weeks first, then a few months. After my experimental stays, I settled in the two-room upper unit of an old house near where my mother lived, which was luckily vacant. I grew up in this house, and it was the place I called home till I left Japan in 1969 to immigrate (that was what I did, I now concede) to America. It was a small house with wooden exterior built before WWII as one of many tract house developments during the first urban expansion in Yokohama. It survived WWII, having escaped firebombing by B-29's. Upper unit was later added because of the frequent flooding of the river nearby. All neighborhood houses but this and one of the neighbor's had been torn down since; they were replaced by larger and of more contemporary styled houses.

With another stroke of good luck I was allowed to register in Japan's national health program. This was particularly fortunate since I discovered almost as soon as I settled that I had breast cancer. I had surgery and received treatment at the hospital where I had been a patient as a child; the old ramshackle building has been transformed into a modern facility. I felt comfortable being treated by a Japanese doctor there, and I recovered from the trauma quickly. I received some support from my old friends, but my mother's being nearby, I felt, made a difference. A mother is mother no matter how old she gets, I thought, feeling grateful. It was as if I had waited to get sick till I went home. Later, back in Seattle, I found out that the treatment I'd received in Japan was not as aggressive as one that would have been given commonly in the U.S. I was glad I discovered cancer in Japan.

While recuperating, I often took a long walk along the river. Flooding was under control now with high concrete walls, and the water was cleaner with hundreds of carps swimming gracefully. The unpaved road by the river had been dusty in old days, forcing my mother to sweep throughout the house twice a day. The stone bridge further down that I crossed every day to go to school was still there. It was by this bridge that I was frequently beaten by a couple of rough boys; I was a girl too quick to talk back to the bullies of the class. The bridge looked awfully small to my adult eyes, and in fact it was too narrow to allow automobiles. The school building was long gone, so was the hill behind, to which I often took refuge with a book and sack lunch. I was able to see an expanse of rice paddies and fields then, but now all gone and replaced by houses, stores, paved streets, and more houses beyond. Other things have disappeared, too: when I realized, there were no flies and mosquitoes around; they've been a part of my summer life in old days.

Even though the daily life in Yokohama seemed far more comfortable, convenient as well as sanitary, there were many things I missed, for example, houses with siding made of wood. No one but the fabulously rich could afford to build a house in the strictly traditional way, someone told me; carpenters who could build such houses were dying out, too. No wonder, I thought, the houses I saw around me used man-made and chemical materials, following Western models; they looked ugly, a good example of aesthetic regression abundantly seen in today's Japan. Yet, people appeared contented, even happy, with new Western style houses and I could not help but wonder if the people's lives inside had also been transformed. I wondered how their life styles, their habits and their behaviors had been altered.

I often strolled on the path by the river, which seemed to be a popular spot among my neighbors, both men and women. One day, I noticed something about them a bit puzzling. So I observed them more carefully and discovered that all of them, coming from the opposite direction, acted as if they didn't seeing me; even when they looked toward me, I didn't find on their faces any sign of recognition, a smile, for example, something I was used to see in similar occasions in American cities (with exception of Manhattan, perhaps). Eventually I got used to it but this dismissal was peculiar and upsetting until I realized I was reacting to the phenomenon as an outsider. Sometime later, I heard on radio exactly the same sentiment expressed by an American woman, a long time resident in Japan. She'd been dismayed at Japanese dismissive attitude, she said; she believed it revealed total lack of interest in fellow humanity. I understood her sentiment, but by then I was back in Japan long enough to see the phenomenon in a different light. Strangers tend to stay strangers in Japan. This explains the peculiar word, gaijin. Foreigners, particularly Westerners, are gaijin, or "outer" person in Japan, and they remain so no matter how long they have lived among the Japanese.

To say simply that Americans are open and friendly while the Japanese are uptight is by and large meaningless. The lesson I learned from my encounter with my fellow strollers' peculiar conduct was that if certain social behaviors appear strange, even disturbing, one needs to adjust one's perception; it is just like crossing international time zones. I found out that my own perceptions and expectations had been altered while living abroad. I simply had to relearn social manners. Then, a few years later, I encountered, back in Seattle, a similar non-smiling or dismissal attitude among the people walking on the street. I saw them acting just like the Japanese strollers. I couldn't help but wonder if this change had something to do with the trauma experienced in 2001. Could it be a result brought by the mentality of "us" verses "them," I had to ask to myself.

The two years I lived in Yokohama near my mother was rewarding to me as to her. We went shopping together and made over-night travels a few times. I achieved a reasonably satisfactory reunion with her, and I've done what I had wanted―to comfort her in her old age. Surprisingly, I was comforted by her as much. Then, suddenly and after brief hospitalization, my mother died of acute leukemia. Her end was swift and largely without pain. She, who stayed a widow for more than forty years after her husband's death, once told me that it was him who scooped her up into the air when she slipped on the tile floor outside her front door; she believed she would see him on "the other side." When had funeral was over and having put away many things she'd left behind, there was nothing that kept me to the old house. According to a contractor, the old house was barely standing. As I had always wanted to live at the heart of Tokyo, I started working on the project of acquiring a home there. It wasn't easy but eight months later, I was in a condominium in Minato Ward of central Tokyo.

My American Series