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Page of Swords & The High Priestess, vol.2
I first came to the United States in July 1990. I was in high school and took a leave of absence to study at a high school in Billings, Montana, for a year as a homestay student. I took advantage of an exchange program offered by a foundation that facilitates study abroad. My host family was Lyle and Maggie Green, who were in their 50s at the time. They were a family of three, including Lyle's mother, Rosetta Rose. Their children were now independent and working in other states.
Before I tell you about my experiences in Billings, Montana, let me tell you a little about my life in high school in Japan. On April 1, 1988, I entered Kanagawa Prefectural Yokohama Suiran High School in the regular course. Since there is an entrance exam to enter high school, many of those who had been complicit in "IJIME/bullying" in the form of "Ignored" against me in middle school went on to a different career path than I did. Their "unity" without good intentions has been shattered by the drastic decline of their peers. And since I have met many new people, I am no longer being "Ignored". The "IJIME/bullying" is gone. All's well that ends well.
However, I felt very sad that Toko Akazawa went to an art school in Kyoto. She once revealed in a magazine interview that her parents were divorced. Toko lived with her mother. She often came to my home to visit. We dismantled old clothes we bought and reassembled them using my mother's "SINGER" industrial sewing machine and "Itotori-Monogatari," a "babylock" lockstitch machine. She then went home after eating dinner prepared by my mother. Toko's mother often came home late at night from work. I needed a lot of time to study, but the time I spent with Toko was very important to me. She thought about her future and moved to Kyoto where her father was, and went to Kyoto Municipal Douda High School of Art and Technology. However, we continued our exchange. Although we went to different high schools, she would come back to Yokohama for long vacations, such as summer vacation, and we would see each other.
As I mentioned before, I had not been a member of any clubs since I quit the track and field club in middle school. In high school, however, I joined the "Kado Club". In high school, club activities are part of the academic program, and we have to join some kind of club to earn credits. Of course, I thought about joining the track and field club again. However, I was beginning to think about starting some kind of business and becoming a successful entrepreneur, so I wanted to gain knowledge that would be useful for my business. I wanted to start a business in the United States, not in Japan. I thought it would not be a good idea for me, a Japanese person, to be unfamiliar with Japan. I don't want to say "I don't know much about Japanese culture" when I am asked about it. In the "Kado Club", we learn not only about Kado (flower arrangement), but also about Sado (tea ceremony), Syodo (Japanese calligraphy), Kodo (traditional incense-smelling ceremony), etc. In addition, we often went to see Kabuki, Noh, Kyōgen, and so on. So, I found it fascinating that I could absorb so much of what I wanted to know in the "Kado Club". If I had not joined the "Kado Club", I would likely have gone through life without reading such excellent texts as Zeami Motokiyo's "Fūshikaden / The Transmission of the Flower Through (a Mastery of) the Forms," a treatise on Noh, or Junichiro Tanizaki's "In'ei Raisan / In Praise of Shadows," an essay on the Japanese sense of beauty in the days when there were no electric lights.
I love music, but I can neither play an instrument nor sing very well. As for painting, I like to appreciate it, but I am not that good at drawing. In other words, I am neither good nor bad at anything, LOL. In short, I didn't have the talent to make a living at it, art-wise. I had a bit of confidence in designing clothes. And it was fun, and I loved it. I enjoy not only designing, but sewing itself. Of course, I still love it! But when I saw Toko Akazawa's bold ideas for clothing, I knew it would be difficult for me to make a living in the professional clothing world. Eventually, after graduating from high school, Toko came back to live with her mother in Yokohama and went to Setsu Mode Seminar, an art school in Funamachi, Shinjuku, Tokyo, which had produced Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo of "COMME des GARÇONS", and architect Tadao Ando, among others, to become a product designer.
The same goes for sports, and since I have not been involved in any sports since I quit track and field club, it is normal to think that I will work for some company or become a public servant in the future. However, I thought it would not be easy for me to fit myself into a company that someone else had established. Other than me, other ordinary Japanese are probably the best at that in the world. In addition, since my SONY "Walkman" and Madonna cassette tapes were destroyed, I had been striving to become an uncommonly "Big, Big, Big Successful Person", so I was not attracted to the high status that can only be reached by continuing to receive high praise over a very long period of time from a stranger in the position of "My Boss". I would be an entrepreneur! Since I am Tatsuo Tsukida's granddaughter, I was thrilled by the stories my grandfather told me about his clients over Western-style meals. The stories of the truly unique entrepreneurs of small businesses my grandfather had nurtured in his position as a banker inspired me. I am going to start a business and succeed!
I therefore felt the need to further improve my skills in reading, writing, and speaking English. Studying abroad was therefore an obvious consideration. I had been attending the "Berlitz" school in Akasaka, Tokyo, since elementary school, but when I went home, I was speaking Japanese. So, I thought I needed to spend some time surrounded by people who only spoke English. Incidentally, the reason I started attending "Berlitz" was because of "Sesame Street," which was shown on NHK educational TV. It was that show with the giant yellow bird!
My father, Sanezumi Shimada, was not pleased that I was too dedicated to my studies. He seemed to think that as long as I found a good man and married him, that was all that mattered. My father thought that women who were too intelligent would be shunned by men. My father is a conservative man who does not like to be too bold. So, when I told him that I wanted to do a homestay through an exchange program, he did not easily agree.
The United States is a dangerous place. There are people with guns wandering around. There is no safer country than Japan. With your current academic ability, you can get into any university. Why do you need to go all the way across the ocean to study English? No father would put his precious daughter in danger.
My father told me so many times. My father is a local public servant who worked for the City of Yokohama and was on the fast track in the field of financial accounting, and as such, he interacted with the members of the Yokohama City Council. At the time, there were several members of the ruling party who were sending their daughters to study in the U. S., Australia, and Canada, and one of them told my father that it would be a very good idea for him to send his daughter abroad to study. So, my father ended up agreeing to let me do a home-stay study abroad program. In fact, Lyle Green, who was introduced to me by the foundation, is a civil servant who works for the city government. In the end, my father felt a kinship with Lyle, who was in the same position, and that was another factor that made things go in the right direction.
My mother, Michiyo, was a person who depended on my father and would not oppose what he agreed to do. In addition, my mother was the daughter of Tatsuo Tsukida, so she actually had a very daring and "adventurous" side to her. My mother used to read books to me when I was very young. Come on, Yukiko. It's time for your book before you go to sleep! My mother would read to me from "Le Comte de Monte-Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne, "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Anne of Green Gables series" by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and various works by Mark Twain, and many others. With these book choices, it is clear how I would have grown up. My mother, after all, had raised me to be an adventurer, and there was no way she would have objected to my living in the United States for a year.
So, I crossed the Pacific and spent a year in Billings, Montana.
I was born and raised in the city of Yokohama, next to Tokyo, so living in Montana's natural beauty was a bit of an adventure for me. Doesn't the mere sound of the words "Rocky Mountains" excite or enthrall you? With "Yellowstone National Park" and "Glacier National Park", Montana could be called the birthplace of "National parks". I watched a lot of American movies to study English, so I knew that Montana was the setting for Marilyn Monroe's "River of No Return". "A River Runs Through It" and "The Horse Whisperer" were movies that came out a little later.
But then again, a movie is only a movie! We are, anyway, amazed that the United States of America is so big that everything is so big. Probably, every Japanese in 1990 must have been surprised. What? Why are they so big? To begin with, the size of human beings is huge. 1990 was the year when Mike Tyson lost to James "Buster" Douglas by KO at the Tokyo Dome on February 11, an unprecedented upset in boxing history. My younger brother, Masayuki, who loves boxing and was watching the live TV broadcast, shouted louder than ever.
Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? No kidding?
Just before that, on February 7, Hideyuki Ohashi became the WBC world straw weight champion, and at the time of Mike Tyson's defeat, he was the only Japanese world champion. I believe "straw weight" or "minimum weight" was a weight class under 105 pounds. In other words, that's the Japanese. If a Japanese girl were to mix with the American crowd, you can imagine how amazed she would be at their enormity.
And the sight of the freeway is astonishing. When we drive on "Interstate 90," the view is endless.
In Japan, highways have soundproof walls on both sides that block the view, so we don't get a sense of the vastness of the land. Therefore, when we drive on a highway, we are impressed by the vastness of the American land! Generally, the cars on the road are too big. Everything is too big. Wow, there are three kinds of ice cream on top of an ice cream cone! It's just amazing things like this.
Their quiet house was comfortable, and Lyle, Maggie, and Rosetta Rose left me free to study. I am now in the business of serving plant-based meals in Kobe, Japan, and I am jealous of Maggie's cooking skills.
Hutterite Chicken roast chicken is Maggie's best dish. I had never heard of "Hutterite" until Maggie bought Hutterite Chicken and fed it to me. I knew "Amish" from Peter Weir's 1985 film "Witness," in which Harrison Ford plays Detective Sergeant John Book. I loved Kelly McGillis. "Amish" keeps Pennsilfaani-Deitsch, while "Hutterite" keeps Hutterite German, in a very similar way. Both are very protective of their own culture. The Hutterite community is famous for maintaining a very high level of agricultural technology. I don't eat roast chicken anymore because I have adopted a plant-based diet, but I often think fondly of Maggie's roast chicken. Her lentil soup was also excellent, and she often baked cookies for me to eat.
Anyway, the Green family's home was really comfortable.
On the other hand, it is not a good idea to come to an unfamiliar place and retreat inside a house. Besides, I can't learn English conversation if I stay in the house in the first place! I was also very active in accepting invitations to BBQs from my classmates. Barry Epstein, who invited me, was my first boyfriend and many things were our first experiences together. No, I'm not going to get into the sexy stuff here! For example, I experienced fly-fishing for the first time. Many people may have the impression that Montana is still a state with a very large number of rivers. That is correct.
Of course, I went into the rivers and fished for trout! I probably caught at least one fish. It's not that easy, but just casting a fly is interesting. I liked casting a fly because I am inherently more physically active and exhilarated than sitting around studying. He was a fly-fishing genius. He was also very good at making fire without matches or lighters, which impressed me. He knew several ways to make fire and showed me different ways to make fire each time to teach me. I came back to the United States in September 1993 to attend Leland Stanford Junior University. "A River Runs Through It" was released in Japan shortly thereafter, so I watched that movie later in the US on video. I still cried because I missed the fly-fishing scenes.
I can't remember why we started dating, but I do remember how impressed I was that he could make fire. He caught a trout and I cleaned it, and I think he was impressed with my knife skills.
Yes, I did. I was a good cook from that time on. I improved by watching and copying my mother's work since elementary school. My mother was happy that I wanted to cook and taught me how to use a knife. She also taught me how-to deep-fried food, which other families might not allow their children to do. In other words, I learned "Tempura" from my mother. "Tempura" is my specialty. I still look forward to making "Tempura" of aralia sprout and eating them sprinkled with salt in the spring. And after my Sony "Walkman" and Madonna cassette tapes were destroyed by the members of the track and field club, I came to believe that one should also be good at cooking in order to succeed in business. It is always better to have fewer weaknesses, so I tried to do as many things as I could and know as much as I could. And so, in the end, I am now in the business of serving good food!
Oh, let me see. I didn't miss Japanese food that much. Because Maggie lent me her kitchen, so, sometimes I would cook Japanese food for myself, and eat it, or I would feed Lyle, Maggie, and Rosetta Rose "Tempura" or something like that. Did I also make "Okonomiyaki/Japanese pizza" and feed it to them? They said it was delicious, but now, I honestly don't know if they really thought it was good or not, LOL.
Anyway, it was the first time in my life that I was conscious of "Nature".
It was a precious experience to eat trout that had just been caught and had been swimming just a few minutes before, not the trout sold as fillets in the supermarket. Only salt. In Japan, I spent most of my time alone since I was treated as an "Ignored," so I spent most of my time with a very small group of friends, including Toko. Even in high school, I had some fun with the members of the "Kado Club," and we would sometimes eat sweets together after going to see a Kabuki play, but I still spent most of my time studying, so I was not the most sociable person. However, I feel that in Montana, I was always, always, always looking forward to Barry taking me out to the river and other beautiful places. We visited Whitefish, saw Flathead Lake and the waterfalls in Glacier National Park.
Or we visited the "Blackfoot Tipi Village" on the Blackfeet Reservation, where we saw crafts and drums made from elk and bison skins, ate their traditional food, and stayed at the Tipi.
I had always wanted to know about Native American culture. I liked the scene in John Ford's "Fort Apache" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," which I saw on TV, where an old wise Native American man asks John Wayne, who has come to negotiate for peace, to smoke a pipe with him. I was under the impression that Native Americans were great people who had wisdom in resolving things. I was taught that they had such wise ideas, but I spent my entrepreneurial twenties in a season of hot struggle, beating my competitors to the punch.
We also did some skiing in the winter. No, I had no skiing experience in Japan. He taught me. Or we ate Bison Burger at Missoula. But the Blackfoot man who showed me around “Blackfoot Tipi Village” said that the elk meat was even better. Barry agreed, so I was eager to try it, and indeed, I did later. I did find the elk meat to be healthier and tastier than the Bison! Now that I think about it, I was quite a carnivore, LOL.
Of course, I went to "Yellowstone National Park" with him! I think I've been there twice. I was thrilled by the sight of the huge hot spring shining in seven colors, and shouted excitedly at the hot water blowing up from the geyser.
Oh, I want to go again!
I also have fond memories of going to a 50's style dance party with Barry when I was about to return home. Think of it like the dance sequence at the end of "Footloose". Or "Back to the Future". Michael J. Fox plays "Johnny B. Goode" with his guitar, but the atmosphere is similar to that last scene of the dance party, although the music is done in a Hard Rock style that is too extreme for 1950's teenagers. In fact, the first song at our dance party was "Maybellene" by Chuck Berry.
- "Maybellene" by Chuck Berry
- "Boogie At Midnight" by Roy Brown
- "Choo Choo Ch'boogie" by Louis Jordan & His Tympani 5
- "Good Rockin’ Tonight" by Wynonie Harris
- "Wow Wow" by Willie Egans
- "Lucky Lips" by Ruth Brown
- "Mama Mama Mama" by Wilbert Harrison
- "Feel So Good" by Shirley & Lee
- "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward & The Dominoes
- "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" by Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers
- "Justine" by Don & Dewey
- "Gee" by The Crows
- "Speedoo" by The Cadillacs
- "The Twist" by Hank Ballard And The Midnighters
- "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles
The song selection was something like this. As I mentioned before, I was a Madonna fan. So I was interested in the hit songs of that era. However, what was playing that day was not even Bruce Springsteen. It was really only songs from the 50s. But that was exciting.
Montana has the lowest percentage of African Americans and Asians in the nation. My classmates didn't listen to black music, but Stack O. Brooks, who was a DJ that day, liked Rhythm and Blues from the '50s. He is one of my classmates. He was a big fan of George Lucas' "American Graffiti", so he collected Vinyl for that kind of music. I never forgot to get his playlist from Stack O. Brooks! My husband, Masato Shiraishi, is a music geek and used to be a radio DJ in New York City. He introduced Asian music to New Yorkers on his "Far East Rare Groove" show, but his favorite music of all Popular music is Black music. He praises Stack O. Brooks' music selections as excellent. Though he says he would add Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love," "My Song," and "Never Let Me Go" to the list, LOL.
In the second half, more songs were selected from Doo-wop.
Maybe "Earth Angel" by The Penguins, "Heaven and Paradise" by The Meadowlarks, followed by "Ten Commandments Of Love" by The Moonglows.
I think Barry and I were in a very romantic and yet sentimental mood. And it was also a night with the heat of Youth…. Sorry about that. I can't remember much about Barry at this time.
I think he was kind and maybe he was struggling for me without my knowledge. That said, I am often asked if I did not face any discrimination against Orientals, but I do not remember that I suffered from such discrimination. There must have been many people who still remember fighting the Japanese in WWII. Maybe Mr. and Mrs. GREEN and Barry were making sure I was comfortable. And yet I feel terrible that I don't remember much.
I then went back to Japan and, as probably often happens, our relationship quietly and spontaneously died out.
Compared to California, where I lived as a bachelor, or Manhattan, where I later began living with Masato Shiraishi, Billings, Montana is a rural, conservative place. However, I felt much more freedom than I did in Japan. Americans are outspoken in their opinions. In Japan, there was an atmosphere in which it was considered a virtue not to express one's opinion. This may still be the case today. When we are united and do things as one, the Japanese group is very powerful. In most cases, strengths are also weaknesses. In Japan, we have a saying, "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down". In a culture where expressing one's opinion is considered "bad," new business will not happen. Of course, there are always great people who can overcome this, so there have been many entrepreneurs in Japan, some of whom have fallen and some of whom have succeeded. Starting a business, whether in Japan or in the US, is a great challenge, and we run into many obstacles. At that time, I thought I would be better suited to a culture that valued openness rather than reticence. I vowed.
I will come back to the United States! And I will stand up!
I will tell you more about Barry and me in the next issue. I will tell you about what happened after that, because later I will revisit Billings, Montana, where I will meet Lyle, Maggie, and Barry Epstein.
In Montana I was moved just by the pleasant oxygen that passes through my nose when I take a deep breath. I was moved by the smell of rain. The sound of the river soothed me. Just touching the plants made me smile. Clearly, I felt that my physical senses were extremely acute, different from when I was in Yokohama or Tokyo. I found that even just sitting quietly in the "Nature" of that place, for example, on a rock by the riverbank, I became energized. It was an extremely important feeling. Now I know that it was a sense of communion with the "Spirits" of the land. It was an exquisite work of the Spirit that made me feel the reality of Love. If it had not been for the days I spent in Montana, I would have experienced a major downfall in my life as I approached middle age. In other words, the time will come when Montana will function as a Holy Land that will revive me.
©Mitsuhiro Toda@Screenwriter Group Aquariusera
