What It's Like

What was it like, living in Japan? -- a simple question with a wriggling kick of an answer that escapes me. Even beginning to describe the gifts and costs of living overseas for nine years would require many conversations of increasing intimacy. Our family’s relationship with Japan, our personal investment in Asia, can only be conveyed within the context of holistic understanding.

A question I have a hope of addressing: What is it like, having lived in Japan? In April, it meant reading a BBC article about anti-missile defenses deployed in Tokyo and feeling that our place, our friends, were in danger.

People cast nets of concern in broadening, concentric rings: family, community, nation. Our net has been stretched to include loved ones and strangers in a far-away land. But Japan isn’t just somewhere over there; we hold Japan close -- as close as our hearts.

Our connection is both deeper and broader than the 2011 earthquake- tsunami-nuclear disaster. Yet the interminable expanse of time spent under desks while our school shuddered; the nights interrupted by aftershocks when we leapt from our futons to stand under a beam in our damaged house; the days of tense waiting, of watching NHK and the BBC for news about the developing reactor disaster and of reassuring husband, oldest son, extended family and old friends -- all across the Pacific at the time -- are emblematic of the transformation wrought in us during our time there.

Ironically, having gone through that extraordinary experience made it harder to leave the following summer. Because our time in Japan was an anonymous interlude in the narrative of the nation, but the disaster highlighted common vulnerability and shared humanity in our shock, horror and sorrow. How could we leave our home of so many years while Japan recovered from the disaster? How could we make a new home in a place where no one would understand what we’d been through?

Japanese and international families alike were wounded by the devastation and loss of life. Those of us at a safe remove from the worst of it were concerned about interrupted transportation, food shortages and radiation. We watched the weather reports, knowing that it was snowing on homeless refugees in Miyagi-ken. Footage taken by eye-witnesses to the tsunami in Sendai, and repeated endlessly on broadcast news, preserved an audio-visual record that will be seared into my mind forever: tiny human forms running from advancing water as terrified Japanese on higher ground screamed, “Hayaku! Hayaku!” Hurry! Hurry!

This spring, our second back in the U.S., we have watched the developments in the Koreas with heartache and concern for our friends -- Japanese colleagues, customers and neighbors of course, but also internationals: Filipinos, Taiwanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Thais and Indians, all of whom may be endangered whether they remain in Japan or repatriate. Long-term residents who will return to their passport countries or ride the storm out in their adopted home. And Koreans -- the boys’ friends, my former students, our fellow parishioners -- whose fragile peace is in jeopardy.

Korea isn’t just somewhere, over there, either. We have been to Seoul. We have toured the beautiful old imperial grounds, sampled Korean barbeque, met and worshipped with a Catholic Korean, a stranger whom we encountered in two different places -- most improbable in a city of 11 million residents, at that time. We went out to dinner with him and his fiancée; she gave us a traditional mask in a beautiful handmade box. We bought furniture on that trip, furniture now in our house in middle America.

Our family shares a unique history that few of our countrymen can fully appreciate. We splurge on proper Japanese rice, seaweed and imported mochi, eat lots of fish and eschew American sushi. We raised third culture kids who think of any city smaller than New York as tiny. From the seeds of our past springs a future shared with Japan, and with Asia. Our boys grew toward manhood there, the two oldest coming of age before we left. They speak a mixture of Japanese and English with their friends from high school, and they dream of returning to the place that feels like home.

Having been a long-term resident of Japan is something like being the mother of man-children ranging in age from twelve to twenty-two. I’m not silly enough to think I understand them completely or even know about everything in their lives. But I love them without measure, I worry about them and I hope for them -- even when they are far away.

I watched the escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula as we prepared to celebrate the graduation and military commissioning of our eldest, who is fluent in Japanese. I’ve thought of a former student, a Taiwanese American who speaks Chinese, English and Japanese, also commissioning this year. And I’ve remembered a shy boy in my English class years ago, a young man now serving in the South Korean Army.

Living in the international community taught us to cast our nets of love and concern wider, to recognize how interconnected our lives are with the other people in the world. It made us personally vulnerable to loss that has happened and could happen in the future, in a land that is very far away. But that is what love always does: it makes us vulnerable. Today, having lived in Japan means having a personal stake in what happens in East Asia. It means hoping and praying for peace for people who are dear to us.

That’s what it’s like.