Remembering Japanese Kindergarten

1966

On a white sheet of paper I take from my dad’s office, I draw a picture of a square brown home. The front door is created first—smack-dab in the middle—and on either side of it I draw two windows at the lower level and then two matching windows above those. A tree, resembling a stick of broccoli, is on the right side and a clump of three pink flowers sit in the grass to the left.

This is not at all what my house looks like. The house I live in with my parents and brother is creosol-black, rectangular, and one story. In the back yard, we have a mammoth-sized magnolia tree and a cherry tree which the caterpillars love in the spring, but neither of them look a thing like broccoli.

I also draw a picture of my mother. I don’t have to ask Dad for a sheet of paper this time because I’m at kindergarten and each student is handed a thick piece of paper by the teacher. The kindergarten is just a brisk walk from our house, in the opposite direction of the train station. Ogawa-san, our live-in maid, a short woman with short permed black hair and dark eyes, walks with me there each morning and comes to fetch me before lunch.

Days later, moms come to the school for a celebratory Mother’s Day program. Upon arrival, each mother receives a red carnation to pin to her clothing, and then is ushered into classrooms to view some of the best artwork southwest of Tokyo.

Wearing a floral dress, her carnation, and a hint of perfume, my mother enters my classroom, ready to find the portrait I’ve drawn of her.

Removing her sunglasses, she glances around the walls which are decorated with faces. She steps closer in, scanning the heavy oil-based pastel-colored creations. Then with an emphatic sigh, she looks at me. “Alice, where is your picture?”

Gingerly, I move toward the wall. Standing on tiptoes and raising my hand, I point to the motherly face I created in class when all of my Japanese classmates and I were told to draw pictures of our mothers.

Mom studies my artwork as I hold my breath. I’ve given her a nose, mouth, two eyes, hair and even a neck. She looks stunning. I even added a little curl to one of her locks of hair.

She takes another look at my picture and then turns to me—her daughter, her firstborn, her artist. “But, Alice, I don’t have black eyes or black hair!”

Well. Of course not; I know this. Seeing her every day, I know what she looks like. But did she think that I was going to use a brown crayon or blue one to draw her hair and eyes? Really? A whole room of kids seated right next to me did not reach for their blue or brown crayon. It was the black crayon that was popular, did my mother not know this? I’d given her a pair of eyes and hair to match my classmates’ work. She looked just like all of the other mamas on the wall.

Mothers with students in uniforms enter the classroom, mothers with folded sun parasols that kept the bright May sun off of their skin as they walked to the kindergarten for this celebration. One mother smiles at me and says to her son, a tiny boy with rosy cheeks, “Gaijin no ko segatakai desune?” (“The foreign child is tall, isn’t she?”)

My mother’s face tightens. I know this look; it is all too common to me. This is the expression she gives when she feels she has been wronged. It is usually followed by words which are spoken without restraint.

As I tug at the hem of my uniform, I pray. I pray that my Mama doesn’t respond to this woman. For she has been known to say things. Once when children pointed at us in the street and called us gaijin, she pointed back at them and called them gaijin.

But she simply turns her eyes toward me and says matter-of-factly, “I don’t know why you would make my hair black, Alice.”

Relief expands from my lungs. She might not be happy with the picture I have drawn of her but at least she hasn’t mimicked another mother for her rudeness.

There are always worse things that could happen.

I thank God for sparing us all.

The boy snorts and grimaces at me before he and his mother exit the room.

His reaction causes something vile to overcome me and that’s when I know I am back to being myself. As the two of them leave, quickly, I offer another prayer. God, you have my permission to zap him on his way down the steps.

Ready to leave the room, I take my mother’s hand and we follow the other parents and children to another room where we are served hot tea and seaweed crackers.


~ Alice J. Wisler grew up in Japan as a missionary kid. She now lives in North Carolina and writes southern novels (Rain Song and How Sweet It Is were Christy finalists) and teaches writing through grief workshops at conferences across the country. Visit her website here and her Carved By Heart shop where her husband is the artistic one.

Abandoning Suitcases to See the Country in a Ford Maverick

My first encounter of being a nomad was when we had to abandon our suitcases. Up until that time, I had never walked away from perfectly good items that belonged to me. Missionaries and their children know the value of hanging onto things. For a long time. That’s why they recycle everything, especially clothes and aluminum foil.

It’s a daunting task to leave two large suitcases in a parking deck and then drive away. But the need to do this was unavoidable. As much as they tried, there was no way that my parents could cram those two large Samsonites into our recent purchase, a 1970 Ford Maverick.

Had my parents been the hippie-types with tie-dyed T-shirts and jeans, I might have felt the leaving behind of suitcases as an anti-establishment protest. On to living with less, peace, hang loose, smile, go with the flow!

But neither my dad nor my mom were of that nature. Dad wore ties. He didn’t own a pair of Levi’s or Wranglers. Mom’s hair was always neatly permed, and like Dad, she only reminisced about once wearing dungarees.

When we abandoned our suitcases, I was afraid that the police were going to come after us, citing us for leaving items on the pavement next to a lonely metal trash can.

As Dad pulled away from the deck, I waved good-bye to those items that had successfully carried our clothes over the Pacific Ocean. Sadness as well as fear crept in. What kind of people had to throw away suitcases? Who had my parents become?

I worried until I heard laughter. My parents were laughing. It really couldn’t be all that bad then, could it?

“Look at us,” said Mom as my father grinned. “Look at us.”

As we sailed down the streets of Los Angeles in the Maverick, the wind blowing my blond hair, Mom, reminding Dad to drive on the right side of the road, I managed a smile. My brother was already making himself comfortable, resting against the plump trash bags that separated us in the back seat.



When my parents realized that the suitcases were going to have to be emptied, Mom rushed across the street from the hotel to purchase plastic trash bags. Our clothes were stuffed into these bags; three in the trunk and two plunked between my brother and me. For the next month, we would not be living out of suitcases, but out of trash bags.

We were on our way to see America from coast to coast. In a green Maverick. With two doors. And no air conditioning. A tiny hole in the back floor consumed my attention as Mom guided Dad to the Interstate. I could see the road from that hole.

Look at us!

I’m not sure which aspect of this picture should have alerted my parents to their mistake. It would be only a few days later when the car broke down for the first of many times that they would realize that this was car was a product of jetlag mixed with naivety. I’m sure the used car salesman knew he had a real live fresh-off-the-boat sucker when my dad entered his lot. Who else would have paid sticker-price in cash for this clunky heap of metal?

*

We traveled from motel to motel, seeing America along the way. When we grew bored, my brother Vince and I smacked, pinched and punched each other over the trash bags between us. We listened to music on a battery-operated Sanyo cassette player. We ate Milky Way bars and wondered what our friends were doing back in Japan.

The motel swimming pools were my respite and we spent plenty of time in them as the Maverick got repaired in various shops.

Mom broke down and prayed one morning after handing me a Pop-tart. I don’t think the Pop-tart made her cry because in her prayer she only asked God to please get us back on the road again. She grew tired of the trip. Apparently, the thrill of driving from L.A. to Richmond, Virginia lost its luster after a week. She wanted a place to lay her head, familiar faces (in addition to ours) and a residence to call home.

I overcompensated for her dismay, acting like this nomadic life was perfect for me. I was no wimp, I could handle it. Daydreaming played a big role as it had in Japan. Only in this country, I daydreamed about meeting and actually talking to one of the cute guys I’d seen at the pool. Of course, I knew it was only dreaming. There was no way I knew how to approach a real American guy, even one my own age. Besides, these born and bred males couldn’t understand me, my culture, or the language I spoke. So I just swam, glanced at them when I was sure they weren’t looking and continued to dream. In my dreams, I wasn’t wearing hand-me-down clothes out of a trash bag and I always knew what to say. I sure had everyone mesmerized.

Days later, my daydream was interrupted when our car nearly went over a cliff. This time the ol’ Maverick had suffered a frozen transmission on the way down from the Rocky Mountains. Dad was able to break the car just before it dove off the side of a steep embankment.

After the tow truck came, and we found a motel room near the repair center where the Maverick was taken, the four of us huddled on our knees, thanking God for sparing us.

“Thank you, God, for protecting us,” Mom prayed and each of us added our own amen to her flow of gratitude. I think she was ready to abandon the Maverick after that and take a plane to Richmond where her parents were anticipating our arrival.

But Dad insisted that we had more of this great country to see.

And so, once the car was repaired, we set out again to continue.

In between my daydreams, I thought about our home we'd left behind in Japan, about the local candy shop where I bought bean paste frozen treats on sticks, green tea candy and cans of iced coffee. The streets that led to home and the houses of my American friends in Osaka and Kyoto seemed long ago and far away.

But somewhere outside of Kansas City around midnight, when my brother elbowed me off his side of the back seat in his familiar fashion, I realized that for now, in this old car with him and my parents, was home-----no matter where our travels took us.

~ Alice J. Wisler is an author of five novels, speaker, and writing instructor. She grew up in Japan as a missionary kid and continues to wonder about what home is, where it is, and what it means. Her lastest book, Getting Out of Bed in the Morning: Reflections of Comfort in Heartache (Leafwood Publishers) is a companion through grief and loss---loss of a loved one, broken relationships, loss of health and dreams. Read more about this new devotional here.

Growing up as an Outsider

It’s never a good day when you feel those jolts of fear moving up and down your spine like someone’s wired you to an electric circuit. But as she studied my face, I felt them, and I knew without a doubt that I’d done something wrong.

It was Mother’s Day 1967, and the neighborhood kindergarten I attended invited moms to the school for a celebratory program. Each mother received a red carnation to pin to her clothing and then was ushered into classrooms to view some of the best artwork this side of Tokyo. Wearing a floral dress, her carnation, and a hint of perfume, my mother entered my classroom, ready to find the portrait I’d drawn of her.

Removing her sunglasses, she glanced around the walls. She stepped closer in, scanning the heavy oil-based pastel-colored creations. Then with an emphatic sigh, she looked at me. “Alice, where is your picture?”

My picture! We were right in front of it. Could she not see? Although worry clouded my mind, even so, I held it together. Don’t make a scene, never draw attention. Gingerly, I moved toward the wall. Standing on tiptoes, I pointed to the motherly face I had created.

Mom looked at the oval shape that held black eyes, red lips, and locks of black hair.

I had colored a little out of the lines, so there was some pink crayon—the color I’d used for her necklace—rubbed into her collar, but overall, the portrait was one I was pleased with. I smiled at Mom, expecting her to smile back.

There was no smile. “Alice,” she cried, “I don’t have black eyes or black hair.”

With feet now planted on the classroom floor, I avoided her expression. Seeing her every day, I knew what she looked like. But did she think that I was going to use a brown crayon or blue one to draw her hair and eyes when the other children were sharing the popular black crayon? So, I gave her a pair of eyes and hair to match my classmates’ artwork.

Knowing I was a foreigner was as familiar to me as the frequented candy store. Even so, I wanted to blend in. I tried to be inconspicuous, never stand out, or be different, noticed, pointed at, and ridiculed. However, with blond hair, brown eyes, and a light complexion, and even tall by American standards, I was clearly unique in a country where black hair, olive complexions, dark eyes and short statures were dominant.

I was born in Osaka, on a frosty January night in a hospital across from a Hankyu train track. I don’t know if I was born on the right or wrong side of those tracks, but I do know that I had a perfectly shaped round head and was as bald as a snow man. My head was unscathed because I didn’t use it to push through the birth canal. Later, I would realize that I was born lazy and would have to fight that tendency especially when it came time to do my chores or complete algebra homework.

Naturally, my parents gave me a name at birth but the locals called me something else. Gaijin. They called my friends with blond hair the same thing and even that pesky kid who tried to look up my skirt in third grade. (He was cute and gave me a Valentine, but he was still nasty.) My father, mother, and baby brother were also called gaijin.

The Chinese characters for the word gaijin are soto jin, meaning outsider. In Japan this takes care of anyone who is not a native of the nation of Japan, which comes to just about ninety-six percent of the world.

When a small child would see me and lift his finger to point, I wanted to disappear. My mom would sometimes point her finger back at the kids and call them gaijin which only embarrassed me more and made the kids laugh and scream all the louder. Didn’t she know we were to be seen but not heard? Never cause a ripple; be the good American. Besides, they didn’t realize that what she was doing was more than mimicking them; she was calling them foreigners. They didn’t understand that to outsiders like us, even they were soto jin.

One afternoon, young Japanese boys that often slid over the concrete wall from the nearby apartment complex, came to the hospital compound to play. Standing in a grassy field of clover, they saw my little brother by a large oak tree. Picking up stones, one yelled, “Gaijin!” Quickly, in chorus, the other boys followed suit. Stones flew past Vincie, some landed at his feet, while others bounced off the tree trunk. Vincie made his way to our front gate, entered it, and escaped into our home. To his advantage, the kids didn’t have the best aim, and physically, he was unharmed.

Occasionally, the sisters of these boys came over to find me, calling out, “Arisu-chan, asobo!” (“Alice, let’s play.”) Unlike their brothers, they were kind and sat with me in the clover field behind the hospital, weaving crowns and necklaces out of clover for me to wear. Seated beside them in the mass of green, I wanted to play dolls and house as I did with my missionary neighbor Jo Jo. I was weary of being asked the same questions, talked about as if I couldn’t understand, and being stared at.

~*~*

At the time I had no clear concept of the United States, my country of passport, but one day, I would be reminded of how different it was from this crowded island. In my teen years, I would long for things about it, yet not understand most of its ways, and wonder how I fit in.

Little did I know, but I would have a lifetime of figuring out how to fit in.

~ An excerpt from Alice J. Wisler's Childhood on the Train, a memoir in progress. Alice is also the author of five novels, including Rain Song (Christy Finalist) and Still Life in Shadows. Her devotional, Getting Out of Bed in the Morning: Reflections of Comfort in Heartache is slated for publication in January. Visit her website: http://www.alicewisler.com

Missing the Home Place

 by Babs Mountjoy

Ours is a mobile society, which is one of the blessings of living in a country like America. We have freedom to travel and a good number of our citizens have the financial wherewithal to do so. Once I graduated from college, I moved away from home, first out West, then down South, and then back to the Northeast over many years.

All three of my daughters have taken advantage of this mobility, too—the oldest has been a Navy girl, and then a Navy wife, traveling to Japan, Guam, Florida and Washington State. (She even pointed out when she moved to Washington that I had to come visit her now because she’d moved closer—it might have been closer than Guam, but it was still nearly three thousand miles from PA!)

Now daughter # 2 is ensconced with a husband and new baby in Reno, Nevada and the third is in Asheville, NC, working as a pastry chef at the Biltmore Estate. They’re all doing very well. But are they missing out?

Our small town is full up with families who have lived here for generations. Son lives here, his dad and mom live here, his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all here too. That sense of home is here, too. A dozen people I could name right off the top of my head could hop in the car and go to grandma’s house within fifteen minutes. That’s a real gift, in my book.

When I was a kid, my parents were divorced, and we spent a lot of time at the grandparents’ homes. Those places were havens of safety and comfort for me, one an Indiana farmhouse, another a small suburban house outside Youngstown. Just walking up the front steps created a wonderful feeling in my heart. I continued to go for years, even after I grew up and had my own family, and the same feeling persisted.

 But one by one, my grandparents passed away. At the farmhouse, my aunt and uncle moved in and took over the property. As of that moment, we have never been welcome in the same way. The same when my father gave up his parents’ home and sold it to strangers.  (They took down the big trees out front and painted it GRAY!) The experience people here in town have, where they can always go to “grandma’s house” because some other family member has it and treasures those warm fuzzies, is something I no longer have.

 The same is true for my girls. My father’s home is gone, and recently their father’s mother gave up the home where they spent every summer of their childhood. So they’ve lost that sweet security as well. Maybe they wouldn’t have visited as often, now that they’re off and involved with their own lives. But now they can't.

It seems that in this freedom we have to travel, we’ve lost something, that feeling of security and always knowing where “home” is. Thomas Wolfe, of course, said we can’t go home again. But I’m not sure he’d say that was a good thing. I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I miss my girls, and I wish we all still had a place to go together that meant “family.” How about you? Is there a home place that your family shares, or have your loved ones scattered to the winds, too?

Barbara “Babs” Mountjoy has written since she was a little girl, unable to restrain the stories that percolated through her fingers onto her keyboard – or, back then, onto the old Royal typewriter. Babs has been a published author for more than thirty-five years, with a number of publications under her belt. Her non-fiction book, 101 LITTLE INSTRUCTIONS FOR SURVIVING YOUR DIVORCE, was published by Impact Publishers in 1999. Her first novel, THE ELF QUEEN, was released under the pen name Lyndi Alexander in 2010. THE ELF QUEEN launched her Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, under which the second and third titles, THE ELF CHILD and THE ELF MAGE, released in 2011 and 2012.Hydra Publication has just released her latest novel, LOVE ME, KISS ME, KILL ME, a supernatural mystery, available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.

 Wild Rose Press released her romantic suspense novels, SECRETS IN THE SAND, in 2011, and, CONVICTION OF THE HEART, in June 2012. Wild Rose Press will also release Babs’ THAT GIRL’S THE ONE I LOVE in September 2012. Zumaya Publications published her women’s fiction title, SECOND CHANCES, in July 2012. Babs is a contributor to two CUP OF COMFORT anthologies. She blogs about autism, writing and life at awalkabout.wordpress.com, and spent seven years of her career as a news reporter and editor in South Florida. Her romances/womens fiction books are published under the pen name Alana Lorens, and her fantasy/sci-fi under the pen name LyndiAlexander.

Childhood on the Train

We know that any "seasoned" woman or man from an older generation is accused of telling anecdotes of how as a child she/he used to have to walk to school uphill in the snow. For at least ten miles. Without a warm coat. I didn't have to walk in the snow to school, but I did have to ride the train. That was forty-seven minutes to school and forty-seven minutes back. "So," I tell my kids, "Your mother had it rough." But looking back, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

We were six years old when we started riding the Hankyu line to school in the sixties from Awaji to Karasuma. During the winter mornings, the windows steamed up and we wrote our names on them. In the late afternoons, we crocheted long red scarves, tried to make sense out of math homework, and avoided conversing in English with Japanese men with brief cases.

You had to know a thing or two in order to be a proficient train rider, and the younger children learned the ropes from the older kids.

Rule number one was to walk briskly out our gates from our missionary homes. Once the five of us blond-haired American kids gathered, we marched past the incinerator behind the Yodogawa Christian Hospital, out the hospital gates, to the left, toward the station. Sometimes at 7 AM there was a dusting of frost on the grass. Sometimes one of us lagged behind due to racing back for forgotten homework or a lunch box. We had to pick up the pace; we had a train to catch and it would, sure as tofu is made from bean curd, not be late---even if we were.

Once the train pulled into the station, doors slid opened and passengers boarded the already packed car. Gloved station attendants pushed commuters onto the cars as the whistle blew. Inside the car, we lifted book bags onto the luggage racks or held them between our feet. Then we grabbed the hand rails—loops of plastic suspended overhead—as the train picked up the pace toward Kyoto.

The next rule was to be extremely quiet as the train doors opened at Takatsuki-shi. I think we heard David O talking to himself even before he boarded the car. We held our breath and closed our eyes, as though those actions would keep him from spotting us. As silent as we were, he always managed to find us.

"Hey," he said one morning so that passengers five cars down could hear. "I got this new chemistry set. Wanna see it?" He hoisted a brown square bag.

No one responded.

David O nudged me, his elbow poking both me and a woman trying to read a paperback. "It's really cool."

I was shy, especially around a boy who was two years older than I. While the other kids engaged in conversation leaving me alone to talk to David O, I shook my head and clung to the handrail.

At last, sensing he was being ignored, and the train was too congested to show us vials and test tubes anyway, he offered to show it to us later.

The third rule came into play at our destination. Immediately, when the doors opened, we were to head up the platform stairs as fast as we could. We raced past ladies in gray kimono and weaved between businessmen so that we could be first in line at the taxi stand.

Our final part of our journey was to ride a cab (five of us missionary kids packed into one Nissan) for six miles to our tiny international school where spelling tests and math equations greeted us. At recess, we enjoyed games of Kick the Can and Red Rover, Red Rover.

I have fond memories of those long treks to school. I smile to think how unusual we must have seemed in a land where the natives all had black hair and dark eyes, were dignified and soft-spoken. We were blond, tall, loud and rowdy.

And as for David O and his chemistry set, I did get to see it. One afternoon on a rather empty train car, he spread his set of chemicals and glass beakers onto the seat. As the train rounded a field of rice paddies, the whole car jerked, and my friend Josephine and I watched the green seat turn red and yellow. The conductor raced out of his compartment in a fury, yelling at the Canadian boy for damaging the train seat. David O hung his head while the conductor covered the stained seat with mounds of newspaper.

Which brings me to the next rule for riding the trains---this one became extremely important for survival. When the train conductor fumed over a spilled chemistry set, it was best to run---not walk---away as fast as possible.

And as Josephine and I crouched inside another car, we closed our eyes and were silent, hoping that perhaps no one would notice that we had anything to do with the boy who had caused a scene.

~ Alice J. Wisler grew up in Japan where she rode the train to and from school and dreamed of being an author. Now she lives and writes in Durham, NC and looks forward to the release of her fifth novel, Still Life in Shadows from River North. Her other novels are: Rain Song, How Sweet It Is, Hatteras Girl and A Wedding Invitation (all published with Bethany House). She also teaches writing workshops, both online and at conferences. Visit her website.