Okinawa on Wheels

Hibiscuses are now in bloom all over the islands.

As an affordable alternative to Hawaii, we spent Christmas in Okinawa. The weather was warm the first two days, which was a welcome change from Tokushima, where it was only one degree centigrade when we left. The architecture, flora and fauna of Okinawa are quite different from the rest of Japan, so it was sort of like being in a foreign country (the Rykyu Kingdom!). Along the sides of the road we saw lots of sugar cane, banana trees, and tropical flowers.  We also spotted a lot of shisa – the ubiquitous lion/dog, protector of Okinawan homes.

Due to the thousands of air force personnel at Kadena, there is a lot of American influence on the islands. We dined a couple of times at A & W, a chain known for its root beer, which reminded me of my childhood home town. We also tried taco rice, which originated in Okinawa about twenty years ago, but is clearly an adaption of American-style Mexican food.

Happily, just about every place we visited had wheelchair access, including an old castle, Shurijo.

Shurijo

We also made the acquaintance of several snakes. Okinawa’s indigenous serpent, the habu, is very poisonous. We saw several in captivity including a pink snake that Lilia thought was cute.

Lilia and Sakura, the pink habu

 As for the rest of the snakes, she didn’t want to have anything to do with them. The python, for your information, was very heavy!!

I was born in the Year of the Snake.

Good News – Call Me Okaasan Makes Japan Times Best Books of 2009 List!

This morning I opened the newspaper to discover that Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering was named one of The Japan Times’ favorite books of 2009! Happy, happy!  It’s always great when a book is received in the spirit  in which it was intended – and appreciated!

A Foreign Wife from History

My ten-year-old son is impassioned with Japanese history, and he’s always reading nonfiction books about historical figures, including Hideo Noguchi, the guy whose mug appears on the 1,000 yen bill. Noguchi is famous for having discovered the bateria that causes syphilis, and for his work, in general, as a bacteriologist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, but never won.

His hand was injured in a fire during his childhood, so he was slightly disabled. An operation restored about 70% of his use of the hand. He was inspired by this to study medicine himself, but he wasn’t able to practice in Japan because people were concerned about the appearance of his burned hand. He decided to go to the United States.

Any bio of Noguchi will tell you this much, but a little known fact, conveyed by my son, is that he married an Irish-American woman named Mary Dardis. They lived together in Manhattan. That’s about all I was able to find out.

During an online search, I found a few lines about Mary. One bio said that she was helpful to her husband, but the woman who really mattered in his life was his mother, Shika. Apparently, there was once (or maybe still is!) a passage in a Japanese textbook about the relationship between Noguchi and his mother meant to illustrate that all-important bond, but no mention of his father, or, naturally, his American wife.

I can’t help thinking that perhaps she was never mentioned BECAUSE she was American. I mean it’s bad enough that this Japanese hero spent much of his life abroad. (He died in Ghana, away from his wife, from yellow fever while trying to prove that the sickness was caused by bacteria. It’s not; it’s caused by a virus.)

At any rate, I’m very curious about this woman.

Interview with Christina Thompson

The summer before last I had the pleasure of presenting with Christina Thompson, author of Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All,  at the Decatur Book Festival. Although our books are very different, they both concern intercultural marriages. Thompson is married to a Maori man, but now lives near Boston. I interviewed her about her book and family for Literary Mama. You can read our conversation here.