His wife hands over the box of keepsakes which include a love letter written by her husband to a woman named Mi Mi in Burma, dated 1955, thirteen years before his daughter’s birth. With nothing to go on but an address in Burma, Julia sets out in search of the truth about her father.

In Burma, she happens to meet an astrologer, U Ba, who knows the story behind her father’s disappearance. Thus, the novel becomes a story within a story, a fable-like unfolding of the great love between a blind boy whose hearing becomes so acute that he can hear heart beats at a distance, and a girl with deformed feet whose songs cure eczema and bring good luck. This girl, Mi Mi, would later become a woman so beautiful  that “there were men prepared to die in hopes of coming back into the world as one of her animals, a pig, a chicken or a dog.”

Fittingly, in a novel in which senses are so important, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is rich with sensory details – the scent of eucalyptus and jasmine, the buzzing of flies, the beat of monastery drums, the taste of chicken curry and sugarcane juice. Sendker brings Burma alive for readers who have little knowledge of the country (which would include most of us). He also weaves superstitions and folk tales into the story, as Tea Obrecht did in THE TIGER’S WIFE, adding a tinge of magic realism.
I must admit that before I started reading, I thought the German origin of this novel indicated that it would be a difficult read. I was wrong. Sendker himself admits in an interview at the back of the book that he’s not a big fan of German novels, and that he’s more drawn to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami. Sendker, it turns out, is a consummate storyteller. His story had me turning the pages rapidly, until the final satisfying end.

If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought this book was originally written in English by an American woman. The translation is excellent.

This book, already a sensation in Europe, deserves to be read widely. I loved it.

My first real-life view of Fuji-san was from a Shinjuku hotel window on a clear day, just after I’d arrived in Japan. I’d seen it several times since then – from airplane windows, from a park in Yokoyama, and once, up close, during a visit with my parents. Perhaps my twelve-year-old children would see Mt. Fuji for the first time on a road trip en route to Tokyo Disneyland.

That morning we piled our car with blankets and food – tuna sandwiches, bento-boxed lunches, Soy Joy bars, tangerines, and homemade banana bread – and set off from our home in Tokushima Prefecture. The sun was just bursting through the clouds, painting the sky pink and orange. Since it was a Sunday, there were few cars on the road. We’d heard rumors of snow in Kyoto and its environs, but so far, the signs boded well. Although Mt. Fuji is often obscured by clouds, if the weather held, we just might be able to catch a glimpse.

My daughter, in the backseat, tracked our progress on a road map. Her finger fell on Naruto as we crossed the bridge connecting Shikoku to Awaji Island. Underneath, we could see the white froth of the whirlpools churning the waters. After we crossed the island with its many onion fields, and traversed another suspension bridge, we entered Kobe.

Beyond Hamamatsu, a city known for its large Brazilian immigrant population and its Honda plant, we began to spot the tea fields of Shizuoka, some of them studded with small wind turbines. Deep pink sazanka blossoms decorated the bushes along the meridian.

And then, finally – “Fuji-san!” my husband cried. “Shutter chance!”

Yes, there it was, looming unmistakably over the surrounding mountains, its peak dolloped with a fluffy white cloud. Surprisingly, there was no snow on the slopes.

“Waaaa!” my daughter exclaimed.

My son, in the front passenger seat, began snapping pictures like a  modern-day digital Hokusai. My daughter drew a picture of the mountain in her notebook.

In Japan, it’s said that if you dream of Mt. Fuji on the first day of the New Year, you’ll have good luck. Perhaps seeing the mountain live, in person at the end of the year will have the same effect.

Also, if you’ve got an e-reader, or if you’re giving one for Christmas, consider downloading Anthology: Realistic Fiction from Cicada, which includes my novella “Pilgrimage.”

And finally, thanks to Liz at Motherlogue for a wonderful review of my most recent book, The Beautiful One Has Come: Stories.

At first, I hesitated to volunteer. After all, the students were probably eager to experience Japanese culture, and our family is hardly typical. I’m an American and my husband is Japanese. Our children embrace both cultures.

We eat with chopsticks much of the time and take off our shoes before entering the house. We soak in the same bathwater in winter. But we communicate in English and Japanese Sign Language as well as Japanese. Sometimes we draw pictures to get our point across. Mealtimes are also a little unusual. Ordinarily, my husband makes breakfast for our family. The morning menu ranges from spaghetti peperoncino to fried rice and Chinese pot-stickers. Occasionally we start the day with blueberry pie. What would a teen-ager from Down Under make of our cultural mish-mash? Wouldn’t she be happier immersed in traditional Japan?

On the other hand, many other families were reluctant to open their homes at relatively short notice. Maybe they were busy, or worried about communication, or didn’t have enough space for a guest. I wanted to be welcoming. Japan is known for its hospitality, after all. And, come to think of it, our family may have its own unique habits and customs, but doesn’t everyone? These days, just as many Japanese people sleep in beds as on futons, and many houses have carpeting or hardwood floors instead of tatami. Furthermore, mixed marriages are on the rise in Japan, having more than doubled over the past ten years or so, according to government sources. Now, 1 in 30 babies in Japan is born to parents of different cultures. So perhaps our multicultural family is not all that unusual.

At any rate, I signed up. The Australian junior high school students arrived during a torrential downpour. School was let out early that day and cancelled the following day due to flooding. We wound up spending more time than we’d expected with our guest, a tall, 15-year-old girl who liked to dance. While she was here, she communicated with us in all three of our languages. (My daughter taught her some Japanese Sign Language, which she immediately put to use.) She played video games with our children (the same ones that she played at home). She slept in a bed and took showers. At breakfast, we offered her miso soup, which she declined, and at dinner, we served the popular Japanese dish curry and rice, which she told us she enjoys back home on the Gold Coast as well. As far as I could tell, the exchange was a success.

A month later, my son set out for Hawaii where he would spend a night with a local family. With his hazel eyes and fondness for macaroni and cheese, he was hardly the emissary most Americans would expect from the East. But perhaps when they opened their home to him, they became acquainted with the future of Japan.

]]> http://gaijinmama.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/welcome-to-our-home/feed/ 4 gaijinmama http://gaijinmama.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/the-first-time-i-had-sushi/ http://gaijinmama.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/the-first-time-i-had-sushi/#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 10:37:02 +0000 gaijinmama http://gaijinmama.wordpress.com/?p=1188 ]]> I’ve recently become a big fan of Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s blog Writerhead, which is directed at expatriate writers, but offers inspiration for anyone. Once a week, there’s an interview with a writer. (Click here, for Kristin’s spotlight on me) and every Saturday, there’s a writing prompt. I wrote the following in response to the prompt “The first time I…”

I had sushi for the first time in Columbia, South Carolina with a guy named Keith. This was back in the 80s, before raw fish on vinegared rice was cool. Before you could buy California rolls at
WinnDixie.

Keith had been born and raised in the state. He’d never lived anywhere else, and he had no aspirations to move away. Me, I was from Michigan. I’d moved down south for my senior year of high school, but I didn’t plan to stay for long. From way back I had dreams of settling in New York City or Paris or maybe someplace in Australia. I wanted to have adventures, to see the world.

We didn’t have sushi in the small northern town where I’d grown up. But Keith knew a place. It was out in Forest Acres, on the edge of the capital city. The storefront was non-descript, the parking lot
dirt, and I took it to be something of a dive. Inside, it was dark. We settled in a vinyl booth and a Japanese waitress with dyed blonde hair came to take our order.

I let Keith do the talking. He’d worked in restaurants and he knew how to cook. Even in his early twenties, back before the age of celebrity chefs, he was something of a foodie. Anyway, he knew his
sushi and his sake better than I did. I knew nothing.

A little while later, the neon-haired waitress, who knew Keith from previous visits, brought platters of sushi to the table. I pinched a morsel of maguro on rice with my lacquered chopsticks and
took a bite. Oh, how it melted in my mouth! And that dab of wasabi – so exciting! The glistening salmon roe, like small ruby beads, burst in my mouth. It was like nothing I’d ever tasted before. And the warmed sake was like liquid bread infusing my limbs.

Not long after, I moved to Japan to teach English. I’ve now lived on the island of Shikoku for twenty-three years. Here, of course, sushi is readily available, and probably better in quality than the
first sushi I sampled inland. But sometimes I get stuck in a rut. These days, I often go for weeks if not months without trying something new.

My friend Keith left this world the other day. In his obituary, he was described as a lifelong resident of South Carolina. That makes him sound kind of boring, like he never went anywhere or
did anything special. But I know different. Keith was the kind of person who could find adventure just around the corner, who knew that life was right in front of you, waiting to be seized.

 It’s one of my Facebook friends, one of my real life friends. She wants to know if I’ve seen the post on her wall. If I’ve heard about you.

  And before she writes any more, I know what she’s going to say. I remember that email you sent a couple years ago, after attending our high school reunion, which began “Geez I didn’t think I’d live this long,” and I remember the closet full of guns and your hero worship of Yukio Mishima.

  And then I remember other things, like the first time we actually met. I was the new girl at school, the Yankee from up north. I’d made a friend – a classmate who lived in a haunted house who had a crush on you. I can’t recall under what ruse we went to visit you at your house, but I remember the three of us listening to home-grown punk rock in your bedroom, and laughing a lot. The next day at school, you sent me a note.

 At the time, I was pining for some bad boy in Michigan, so I didn’t appreciate your interest. I’m sorry. But we were young, and I think you liked to pine, too. Before me, you’d spent years longing for somebody else.

Now I’m remembering that you’re the only guy, in my 45 years, who ever sent me a dozen red roses. The only guy to ever paint my portrait. The only guy who ever wrote a song about me. You were there at the end of every crappy college relationship. There was that time when the guy I had fallen in love with hooked up with somebody else at The Beat, leaving me stranded. You gave me a ride on the back of your motorcycle all the way back to Lexington, forty miles or so in the middle of the night. You were a dependable and caring kind of guy. And you cooked like a demon. Man, you could cook.

 Maybe I wasn’t a good enough friend. Maybe I didn’t listen hard enough. I remember going down to the riverside at night (with a bottle of booze, probably) and hearing about your latest heartbreak. I know I listened, but maybe I didn’t say the right thing. And that email message you sent on Valentine’s Day three and a half years ago. Was that some kind of cry for help? I figured you were drunk and feeling nostalgic, that you probably felt better a few days later. Now I find myself regretting my perky reply. But I was there. I wrote back, didn’t I? And there were others among us who wanted to be with you, to be there for you. Hey, and why didn’t you come to any of my readings or book signings like you said you would?

 I dig into my drawer of old photos, trying to find that one of you holding a sword in front of the portrait you painted of Yukio Mishima. I come across a postcard from Graceland sent in 1988, back before I was married.  You wrote: “I went to see the Big E for Thanksgiving. I went by myself and it kind of bummed me out ‘cos it rained all day, was really commercialized, and 90% of the people never really care about Elvis it seems.”

 I think you cared about Elvis. I think you cared about a lot of things.

Later, when you finally met my husband, you told me that you liked him in spite of yourself. He felt the same about you. He’ll always remember you because you helped him realize that typical Japanese fantasy of firing a gun. You were careful with guns, though. Although you accidentally shot yourself in the toe that one time, I remember that you were safety-conscious.

 Those boys I pined for, they’re all on Facebook now – married and having barbecues, or divorced with three kids, selling used cars, “looking for a relationship.” Last I heard, you were still spinning records, cooking gourmet meals, making movies with friends and entering them in film festivals, going out, painting. I sent you a message, telling you that there were photos of you on Facebook, urging you to “be my friend,” but you replied that you weren’t interested in social networking.

 That was two years ago.

I can’t believe you’re gone.

I send a message to you via email: “Please tell me that rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.

 But there is no reply.

(In memory of Ernest Keith Wilson 1965-2011)

I made it to Osaka in time for a live music event featuring, among others,  accordionist/rakugo performer Katsura Sunshine and GeneZ, a hiphop trio with Ghanian, Okinawan, American Filipina, Irish, and Japanese roots.

On Sunday morning, the academic forum was held. To start off, USC Professor Duncan Ryuken Williams, who organized the Hapa Japan Conference held at UC Berkeley this past spring, spoke about the history of hapa identity in the United States. This was followed by a presentation on multiculturalism and mixed identity by renowned playwright Velina Hasu Houston. She then led participants in a theatrical workshop, which went well.

In the afternoon, we heard presentations from Hyoue Okamura, who made me rethink the use of the word “mixed” in describing my children; Laurel Kamada on Mixed-Ethnic Identities and Adolescents in Japan; linguist Tim Greer on “Accomplishing Multiethnic Identity in Mundane Talk;” and Shizuyo Yoshitomi on “Identity and Heritage Languages: Initiatives in the Community.”

I gave a brief presentation on my experiences of raising mixed children in Japan. (Not being an academic myself, I was kind of nervous. I was intimidated by all of the linguistic jargon and I’m not accustomed to presenting in Japanese. However, some attendees approached me afterward and seemed to have gotten something of value out of my talk, so I was glad to have presented.)

Finally, Marcia Lise and Natalie Willer talked about The Hafu Project, which includes a traveling photographic exhibit, a book-in-progress, and a film-in-progress. I was surprised to learn from them that one in ten marriages in Tokyo are between a Japanese and non-Japanese.

It was invigorating to see so many hafu individuals in their 20s and 30s involved in exciting projects, and made me feel hopeful about the future of my children in Japan. I was also impressed by the mad organizational skills and aplomb of Edward Sumoto, who, along with  Dr. Yoshitomi of Osaka University’s Global Collaboration Center, made the whole thing happen.

If you live in Japan, consider checking out this event next year.

Hideki Irabu didn’t grow up with those same assurances. He was born to an Okinawan woman and an American, who apparently left no forwarding address. In interviews, he was mostly reluctant to talk about his roots, but he told one sportswriter that he had aspired to go to the Major Leagues so he could attract the attention of his father. By all accounts, he never met the guy, even after he joined  the Yankees. Bullied as a boy in Japan, as an adult, he was booed by fans from his father’s country. He returned to Osaka, declared that Japan was best after all, and led the Hanshin Tigers to a championship.

Bobby Valentine once called him “the Nolan Ryan of Asia.”

A couple of years ago, his career coming to a close, he played here in the Shikoku Island League.

The day before yesterday, he was found dead in his home in Los Angeles, an apparent suicide.

“Because of his background, Hideki never had a chance to find out who he was, unlike other Japanese who came to the States. He didn’t have a home or an identity. And I think that was the root of all his trouble…” Jean Afterman, a lawyer for the Yankees was quoted as saying in The Samurai Way of Baseball.

What if his mixed heritage had been celebrated? What if, in his home, he had been adored?

And while you’re there, dip into some of her posts on her multicultural family, and parenting a child with special needs.