A Tale Of Two Chests

In our hallway, there is a wooden chest with iron fittings and handles. It isn't an especially beautiful piece of furniture, but I prize it greatly. Not only is it useful -- you can put clothes into it and years later they will smell as sweet and fresh as the day you stored them -- but it was a real find: my husband saw it on the local rubbish heap between a rusty refrigerator and a set of broken plywood shelves. When he brought it home, spattered with rain and mud, we had no idea it was anything special.

The chest was relatively light but bulky, composed of three parts which could be neatly stacked on top of each other. I didn't appreciate it at first; it had obviously spent decades in somebody's kitchen, and while the wood wasn't warped, it was a dull, drab color from years of exposure to kerosene and cooking smoke. I wrinkled my nose as I opened the drawers, expecting the stale fug of old, damp furniture, but was pleasantly surprised by the sweet-resin smell of fresh-cut wood. Over the next few weeks, the chest only rose in my estimation: although clothes put into our other chests-of-drawers quickly dampened and furred over with mildewed in Tokyo's humidity, whatever I put in this one stayed fresh and sweet-smelling.

One day, a friend came over. As soon as she saw our new chest, her eyes lit up. "Where did you get the Paulownia chest?" she asked. I told her, and she shook her head in amazement. "You were so lucky! Those cost a bundle nowadays."

"Why would someone throw it away then?"

"It was probably some young person going through the effects of an elderly relative. Somebody who didn't know any better." She ran her hand over the top of our chest. "This is a really good one, too -- at least 60 or 70 years old."

My friend told me that her family's Paulownia chests were sanded down at the end of every year. The iron fittings and handles were removed first. Afterwards, the freshly-sanded chests looked and smelled brand new. "You can keep anything in a Paulownia chest," she said. "Silk kimono, pillows, bedding -- nothing will sour, and the moths won't touch it. Hang onto it." Even if she hadn't admired it so, I was already loathe to part with it. Because if something you pick up for a song is special, something you find on the rubbish heap is even more so: it reminds you of your good luck and your good sense.

We brought another chest-of-drawers back from Japan too, an even larger, heavier one that made us sweat and curse as we heaved it through narrow doorways and up the stairs. We bought it in a used furniture store in Abiko, in the summer of 1998, on a day so hot that the sweat rolled off us as we stood, fanning ourselves in the air-conditioned shop. In fact, the heat made us choose hastily: it was solid and beautifully crafted, but it was far too big for our tiny house. For years, it overwhelmed our cramped little living room.

The clerk who showed us the furniture was a personable young Ghanaian man who spoke English and fluent, unaccented Japanese. "I know he's wasted on us!" the proprietor of the shop told me. "He studies all the time, that's all he does. Up in that little room of his -- you should see all his books! Japanese, law, politics." She fanned herself with a furniture pamphlet. "If he was Japanese, he could be prime minister of Japan in a couple of years, I'm not kidding."

When we left Japan, we brought both chests with us to Scotland. The second year we were back, I took the handles and fittings off the Paulownia chest and sanded it with the finest sandpaper I could find. I like to think about the long life it had before it came to us. I try to imagine it in the kitchen of some Japanese family, where it no doubt saw out the war. I wonder if the family crouched near its bulk during air raids, if the woman who opened the drawers to put things in and take them out was as comforted and cheered by the sweet smell of its wood as I am. And I wonder what she would have thought if she had known the future her chest would have, going off on its own adventure with an an Anglo-American family.

I look at our large, sturdy chest-of-drawers too, and try to remember how hot it was the day we bought it, how freely we sweated, standing in that used furniture shop, running our hands over its wood. I wonder what happened to the young Ghanaian man, whether he is still in Japan, what he managed to achieve. My memory is stretched just trying to conjure up the heat of that day, what a headache it was getting that chest into our house, and how ridiculously oversized it looked in our living room.

And I can't help but wonder: what adventures will my furniture will have after we have parted ways?

Living In This Time Of Peace

Years ago, I found myself in a small village in Shikoku one evening, needing a place to stay. I had been counting on getting a room at a youth hostel in a nearby town, but when I got there, I found it was full. So I walked four miles to the next village where I had been told there was a temple that put people up. Unfortunately, the temple was no longer functioning as an inn and unless I felt like sleeping outside, I was out of luck. The mosquitoes were fierce that night and I was exhausted and desperate for a good night's sleep. A woman who worked at a shop near the temple told me there was another youth hostel in the next village. I walked there in the growing darkness, tired and hungry, my backpack tearing at my shoulders, blisters forming on my heels.

After a long search I found the youth hostel -- an old farmhouse in the countryside -- but was disappointed to see that there were no lights on. But before I could turn away, close to tears, the door opened and a little old lady in kimono stood there, obviously surprised to see me. She and her husband hadn't expected any guests, but yes, there was a room, though it was a bit musty. The room was dormitory style and perfectly fine, but when I asked the woman where the bathroom was, she frowned. "I'm sorry, but you won't be able to have a bath tonight."

My face fell. I was filthy; I had walked at least twelve miles and there wasn't a muscle in my body that didn't ache.

"It's just that we weren't prepared for you," she explained. "Normally, people make reservations and we're able to provide for them."

I said I understood and the woman left after telling me what time breakfast was served in the morning. As I was unpacking my backpack, there was a knock at my door. The woman was back. "You can have a bath," she told me. "It's been arranged." She pointed to the bathhouse, smiled at my effusive thanks, and left again.

I gathered up my furo dogu, literally 'bath tools': a small plastic basin, soap, shampoo and towel, and made my way across the garden to the small bathhouse. An elderly man in hakama waved to me; he seemed to be collecting twigs, stuffing them into a large basket.

I pulled open the bathhouse door and almost gasped: I could hardly believe how primitive it was, just a small tub in a tiny room with vents along the floor and ceiling. There were the customary spigots and wooden stool near the floor; in Japan, you clean yourself off before you get into the bath. The tub was full of warm water. As I bent down to test it, I saw the little old man outside carrying his basket of wood across the yard. Smoke billowed out from under the bathhouse and suddenly I realized what was happening: he was gathering wood to warm the water for my bath. I felt like crying: I'd had no idea of the inconvenience I had caused by showing up so late at night, needing a room and a bath.

At breakfast the next morning, I thanked them profusely and apologized for putting them to so much trouble. The old woman smiled. "Years ago, we went to England," she told me. "It was just after the war -- we were there for a conference -- and it was bitterly cold. When we got to our hotel and tried to run the bath, we were only able to get one inch of lukewarm water." The old man joined in: "We tried to explain and the staff understood us, but they told us that no one could get more hot water than that." His wife nodded. "We were so miserable! All we wanted was a bath." She patted my hand. "When I saw your face last night, I knew I couldn't let you down. I knew just how you felt, walking all day like that."

During breakfast, they came into the dining room to talk to me individually. They asked me what books I liked, how long I had been studying Japanese, why I had decided to study it. They wanted to know about my favorite Japanese authors, what I thought of Japanese politics, where I had been in Japan. I could barely answer half of their questions, but I was still grateful to be asked; I'd grown tired of being asked my shoe size, how old I was, whether I could use chopsticks or eat raw fish.

After breakfast, they showed me around their hostel. And gradually I began to see that this couple were extraordinary, not only because they were prepared to light the fire for an unexpected stranger's bath, but for many other reasons. Their house was filled to bursting with books in both Japanese and English, yet they spoke to me only in Japanese. In Japan, where English-speaking people are naturally keen to show off their skill, this was a first for me and an incredible honor: from the books on their shelves, I have no doubt that their English was superior to my Japanese. There were also photographs of them with dozens of different people from around the world, former guests of their hostel, and a book filled with thoughtful, heartfelt expressions of gratitude signed by people from dozens of countries. You were so wonderful, like my mother and father! wrote a girl from the Philippines. I loved delicious soup too much, Sachiko is excellent cook! wrote someone from Brazil. This guest book with its multinational comments was obviously an object of great pride and pleasure.

They stopped in front of a Delft plate; the old man reverently lifted it off the shelf. "We received this from a lovely Dutch boy. He visited us five years ago, and the next year he came back with his parents." His wife wiped a spot of dust off the plate. "They spoke Japanese. Do you know how that was possible?" I shook my head. "As children, they were both incarcerated in a detention center run by the Japanese in Indonesia." The old man gently set the plate back on the shelf. "They send us a Christmas card every year," he said proudly. "We count them as our dear friends."

"We are so fortunate," his wife added. "So fortunate to have lived to see this peace. To be able to meet young people like you, from foreign countries." She nodded once and tilted her head. "Please remember this: how fortunate you are -- how fortunate we all are -- to live now, in this time of peace."

When I left, greatly refreshed, relaxed, and well fed, I thanked them many times and yet it was not enough.

It will never be enough.

A Wild Goose Chase

My flat in Yokohama had a washing machine that did not work.

On my day off, I packed up some of my heavier clothes and went off in search of a Laundromat. I was tired of washing my clothes by hand. Someone had told me there used to be a laundromat not far from the next station, and I was determined to find it.

Half an hour later, I was ready to burst into tears: I’d been on a wild goose chase looking for that elusive laundromat for over thirty minutes, and I was damned if I could find it. My feet hurt, and my trousers weren’t warm enough because all my winter ones were in the pack, desperately in need of a wash. I was cold and tired and hungry, too, and yet here I was going in circles, looking for a wretched laundromat. Everyone I met knew just enough to give me hope, but not enough to give me precise instructions. I felt like I was doomed to wander the streets for all eternity, humping twenty pounds of dirty laundry, searching for the laundromat from Brigadoon.

It would have been better if someone had categorically said that there was no laundromat in the area. The problem was, several people I stopped assured me that the laundromat was not merely a figment of my imagination. Oh yes, there was definitely a laundromat in the neighborhood, they were certain they’d seen it, although they themselves had never used it. When I asked them exactly where it was, though, they would furrow their brows and begin to hem and haw.

"Next to the supermarket, the new one," said a middle-aged woman with shopping bags hanging from the bars of her pink moped. She had a page-boy haircut with a striking blue rinse and a toy poodle better groomed than I was stared up at me from the moped’s basket. The woman had stopped to talk to a couple, an elderly pair who looked as though they were out for a walk.

“No,” the elderly woman put in, “that’s a dry cleaner’s.”

Her male companion disagreed. “The dry cleaning place is next to the pharmacy.”

“That’s the old one,” the woman with the pageboy said. “And it’s not a dry cleaner’s anymore. It’s a pet shop now.”

“Ah. I’d heard they were going to sell. Wasn’t that Yonezawa’s place?”

I felt like jumping up and down and screaming. “Umm, the laundromat . . .?”

They all stared at me for a moment as though they’d forgotten why I was there, in their midst. The woman with the page-boy smiled indulgently. “Have you asked at the police box?”

“Where’s the police box?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. This was my day off! If the laundromat really didn’t exist, I'd find some warm, quiet place and have a cup of coffee. I’d need a break if I was going to spend the rest of the day hand-washing clothes.

“Back that way,” the woman said, pointing in the direction I’d just been in. But my pack was heavy and I was loath to retrace my steps.

Just as I was telling myself that wearing dirty jeans for the next week wouldn’t be the end of the world, a young woman approached me. She looked about my age, but more tired and careworn, and she seemed distracted.

“Do you need help?” she asked shyly.

“Yes! I’ve been trying to find the laundromat.”

She wrinkled her brow. “I don’t know where it is, but I’ve got a map of the neighborhood at home.”

I was tempted to say I would ask at the police box – they were bound to know there, after all – but I decided to go with her, reasoning that her apartment was probably closer. I was relieved to know she had a map of the neighborhood: almost all Japanese neighborhoods have a map that not only shows you the name and location of every business, but the names of each resident. The trick is finding a neighborhood map when you need it. In some neighborhoods, they are handily posted where a poor lost soul can find them; in others, they are craftily concealed and only the locals can point then out. Japanese streets are generally not named; cities and towns are divided into areas, sub-areas, and blocks. Houses and apartments in each sub-area are not geographically numbered, as new units are constantly being built between old lots, and finding your way around in a strange neighborhood can be hellish. You have to pity Japanese postmen; after only a few months in Japan, I certainly did.

Unfortunately, the woman’s house was at least half a kilometre away, through a warren of dark, meandering little side streets. She walked fast, as though she were in a hurry to get home. Already tired and weighed down by my heavy pack, I had to struggle to keep up with her.

“Here we are,” she said at last, in front of a small, shabby house in a housing tract. “Come on in!”

Stepping through the door, I could smell the freshly-mown grass smell of new tatami coupled with sour milk and unwashed clothes. Looking around, you got the feeling that whoever lived there was very busy. I heard a baby crying, and when I looked in the direction of the noise I saw a child barely old enough to walk come toddling towards us, arms outstretched. The woman stooped down and picked him up.

“This is Gen, my little boy! Gen say hello to the nice lady!”

I stared at Gen. A stream of yellow-green snot ran from his nose straight down to his chin. He stared back at me uncertainly from his mother’s arms and hiccoughed, still whimpering. I looked to see who had been caring for him in his mother’s absence, but there seemed to be no one else around.

The woman seemed in no hurry to go and look for the neighborhood map. She gave Gen a kiss and joggled him a bit to get him to stop crying.

I couldn’t help it, I just had to ask. I pointed to Gen and said “Hitori de?” There was probably a better way of asking if her baby had been left alone in the house, but I didn’t know how else to say it.

She nodded, misinterpreting my “all alone?” to mean ‘Are you by yourself.’ She juggled Gen in her arms again and said to me, “His father is in America,” as though that explained everything.

“Oh,” I said as though I understood – even though I didn’t.

“He is American,” she added.

“Oh!” I looked at Gen, and suddenly realized he was Eurasian. I didn’t know what to say. She was stuck here with the baby, poor kid, but her husband was back in America. I wondered how long he’d been gone and when he was coming back. “What state is your husband from, if you don’t mind my asking?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She bit her lips. “And he is not my husband.”

Uh oh.

I held Gen while his mother went to look for the neighborhood map, but he wasn’t having any of it. “Mama!” he wailed fitfully, his arms stretched out towards her.

I tried jiggling him about the way his mother had done. “Gen, Gen! Look out the window there!” I positioned him so that he could see the birds in one of the trees outside, but he strained away from me. “Mama!”

“Um…I think he wants you!”

“Oh, he always wants me,” his mother called from the next room. “You always want me, don’t you Gen?” She had the map now, I was relieved to see, and was beginning to open it.

“Would you like me to look at the map instead?” I hazarded, juggling Gen on my hip and trying to make myself heard above his screams. Poor little Gen had a streaming cold, it seemed. God knew what he’d been doing all by himself in the house before we arrived, but it hadn’t been wiping his own nose.

“No, no, I’ll look – but if you could just hold him for me while I do . . .” She opened the map and started looking for the Laundromat.

Part of me was relieved. Maps are a challenge for me even when they’re written in English, and I found Japanese maps even more confusing. But hanging onto Gen was getting tricky: he didn’t like being parked with a stranger. He’d been waiting for his mother to come home, but her attention was elsewhere. Agitated, he squirmed and fidgeted and strained away from me and I wondered why I was supposed to hold him when he'd obviously been ranging freely about the house before his mother got back.

Gen now began to struggle fiercely, and I had to put him down. He toddled off to his mother, arms outstretched. “Mama, mama, mama!”

I’m not sure how long it took Gen’s mother to scan the map and find that there was no laundromat indicated anywhere on it. Five minutes? Ten? It felt like a lot longer. I began to feel panicky. I was never going to get my clothes washed! “Maybe I should just go and ask at the police box . . .?” I said, eyeing the door longingly.

At first she insisted that it would be there on the map – it had to be. She’d find it – it was just a matter of looking. Finally, though, she gave up. Gen was hanging on to her leg and wailing for all he was worth, crying to be picked up, to be noticed, to be loved.

“I don’t understand it,” she murmured, “I’m positive there used to be one next to the pharmacy in the old mall.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the former dry cleaner’s was now a pet shop. “That’s okay,” I said, desperate to leave. “They’ll know where it is at the police box. I probably should have asked there to begin with.”

“Yes,” she said a little sadly, “they’re bound to know at the police box.”

She picked up Gen and jiggled him on one hip. “You wouldn’t want a cup of coffee, would you?”

I could see past her into her tiny kitchen, the sink piled high with unwashed dishes. I was dying for a cup of coffee, but I wanted to be anywhere else but there. “No, but thanks.”

Stepping back into my shoes in the entrance-way and shouldering my backpack, I turned to wave goodbye to her and Gen. It suddenly struck me that I didn’t even know her name.

“Come back and visit us any time!” she called out, shaking Gen’s little wrist lightly so that his hand flopped back and forth. “We’re always here! Aren’t we Gen-gen? We never go anywhere!”

I smiled and waved. I had no intention of visiting again. But to this day I wish I had.

Vying For Tadashi

One very hot summer day, our family took a trip down to Kyushu, Southern Japan, to visit a former professor of mine. Our children were nine and six at the time, and prone to quarrel about everything. We thought that once we were away from their toys, books, and friends, they might feel a little sisterly solidarity and bond a bit better, but this proved not to be the case.

They quarrelled about who sat on which side of the car we had borrowed. Over who sat next to their father or me, (preferences changing from day to day). Over where we would go or not go, what we would eat or not eat, who was given the larger ice cream or biggest piece of cake, and who got to stand closer to the octopus in the aquarium. Going on a vacation with kids is the biggest oxymoron I can imagine. Truly, once you've had kids, your days of carefree holidays are pretty much over.

The heat didn't help, but we finally got a brief respite in an airconditioned hotel room, when we managed to organize coloring books and crayons and get a delicious thirty minutes of uninterrupted, rivalry-free quiet.

Then my former professor showed up with Tadashi.

Tadashi was a perfectly nice young man, a graduate student who hoped to become an art teacher. He was delighted to meet us and charming with our kids, who took to him almost worryingly, bringing him drawing after drawing and generally bending his ear as they eagerly told him about their friends, their art classes, and their preferred media. (Crayons for the youngest, magic markers for the eldest.) Tadashi could hardly get a word in edgewise and frequently looked a little overwhelmed by our offspring and their rather suffocating attention, but he took it well.

The trouble started after he left.

"I'm going to marry him," our eldest proudly informed us.

"He's mine!" insisted her sister.

"I'm older than you!"

"Big deal! I was born in Japan!"

"So what? I've lived here longer!"

"That's just because you're older!"

"Who cares, you stupid kuso baba?" (Don't ask; they didn't learn it from us)

"Moooom!"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I've heard stories about sisters quarrelling over suitors, but not when they are nine and six respectively.

"He's too old for both of you," I told them.

"Uncle Paul's girlfriend is 20 years younger than him!"

I sighed. "That's different."

And for the next two days, we had to listen to their squabbling about Tadashi and who 'got him.'

Before we left the area, Tadashi paid us another visit and invited us to his house. His mother, he told us, enjoyed showing off her hand-painted doll collection. Our girls were ecstatic, but it wasn't the dolls they were looking forward to seeing.

Takahara-san, my former professor, met us before we left for Tadashi's, and I happened to mention that our girls were taken with Tadashi, though I refrained from telling him just how much so.

"Tadashi's a really nice kid," he informed us. "And I've taught him and his brother."

"He has a brother?" I asked, winking at my eldest.

"Not just a brother -- a twin brother. They look exactly alike."

As soon as he left the room, our eldest turned to her sister.

"You can have the brother. I get Tadashi."

Drinking With Miyuki

Miyuki’s name meant ‘beautiful snow,’ but her complexion was sallow and pock-marked and she had a scrunched-up face like a Pekingese dog’s.

She had the body of a ten-year-old boy, but the voice of a truck driver. "Do you like to drink?" she asked me the first time we met. I told her that I didn’t much like alcohol, but I liked getting drunk. She studied me for a moment then nodded. "You and me’ll get on fine, then."

She loved drinking, and whisky was her favorite. Drinking with her could be scary: she didn't seem to know when to quit. She was also one of the funniest drunks I've ever met: she’d get wasted in some hole-in-the-wall bar, then want to fight any men who came on to us. It was hilarious to see a woman barely 4' 11" leap off her barstool, fists up, and tackle some drunk who'd made a pass. Nobody ever made a pass at Miyuki: no matter how drunk a man was, he wouldn't have dared. I'd have two drinks and be plastered; our other friends might have a few beers and be tipsy; Miyuki would soak up the bar and still be on her feet. After a night out drinking, we'd serenade our taxi driver all the way home with a multilingual version of ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railway.’

Miyuki told me once that she had grown up in a very strict, traditional, unloving home, the only girl out of five children. At the age of sixteen she’d done something unthinkable for a modern Japanese girl: she’d left home for good. For a year, she slept rough in parks and temple grounds, surviving by doing odd jobs like weeding, window-cleaning, and car-washing. Looking for a place to bed down one night, she met the local Catholic priest, who happened to be a wonderful man. The Church had taken her in and Miyuki had never forgotten their kindness. She converted to Catholicism and was the most devout, hard-working Catholic I have ever known.

Amazingly enough, Miyuki was married to a pleasant, conventional-looking man and they had a ten-year-old son, Kohei. Miyuki, her husband and Kohei were baseball fanatics. They would play softball together in the park, taking their respective turns at batting, pitching, and catching. If you saw them from even a short distance, it was hard to tell who was who. They were all roughly the same size, and they all dressed identically in jeans, tee shirts and baseball caps. Miyuki once bragged that she did her clothes shopping in the boys’ section -- that she was able to buy all their clothes in the same place.

Then she got ill. At first, no one would admit that it was anything serious. Some sort of virus, they maintained; she’d soon be fine. But months later Miyuki was still in the hospital. I finally got up the courage to ask our mutual friends, Shizue and Keiko, what was wrong with her. They didn't really want to talk about it. It was some form of hepatitis, non-communicable, they said. Miyuki’s fondness for whisky, beer and sake had done her liver no favors, and the prognosis wasn’t good.

We all went to see Miyuki in the hospital. She looked awful: scrawnier and sallower than usual. She was worried about Kohei and her husband, but Shizue and Keiko assured her they would look out for them.

"When I beat this thing," Miyuki boasted, "we’ll all go to Kyoto and do a round of the temples and shrines."

"What will you do if you’re still on the drip?" Keiko asked, raising one eyebrow.

Miyuki grabbed the pole her drip was hanging from and gave it a good shake. "I’ll take it with me!" she cried. "Won’t I be a sight, dragging this sucker up and down the stairs at the station!?"

Miyuki died eight months after entering the hospital. Miyuki’s friends rallied round her husband and son and took their turns looking after Kohei with the other Church ladies. On the rare occasions I spoke with Shizue, Kohei seemed to be doing well. I inherited a box of his outgrown baby clothes shortly after my youngest daughter was born and, when I thought of him at all, assumed that he was growing up happy and well cared for.

Six years after Miyuki had died, I met Shizue and asked after Kohei and Miyuki’s husband. My friend’s face fell.

Two years earlier, Kohei’s father had dropped dead of a heart attack. He was barely 40 years old at the time. After his father’s death, Kohei had suffered from severe depression. Nothing anyone said or did seemed to make it any better. All of his mother’s friends rallied around, once again. Counselling sessions were scheduled, visits were carefully arranged, but Kohei seemed to sink even further into depression.

One day when he was particularly depressed, he disappeared. This had happened often before, so no one was terribly worried at first. And he was almost a man: eighteen years old. After days had passed, however, his mothers’ friends began to worry and the police were called. A search was conducted and his photograph was distributed to police departments all over Japan, but the days turned into weeks, then months, then years.

No trace of Kohei was ever found, and to this day he is still missing. The money in his bank account was never touched. There was a point when his mothers’ friends began to pray that he had been kidnapped and that someone would call asking for ransom. Or that he’d made friends with the wrong kind of people and they were trying to dupe him out of his money -- even that would have been a relief. But no calls ever came.

When I remember Miyuki, I don’t see her as the sallow woman in a hospital bed tethered to a drip. I see her dressed in her jeans, tee-shirt and baseball cap, one point of a triangle, facing her boy and her man. She is swinging her bat, roaring at her husband to just pitch that damn ball again – with or without a spin – to pitch it just one more time – and by God, she’ll hit it, she’ll send it sailing over his head and wipe that smile off his foolish face. Perhaps, in the pocket of her jeans, she has a small flask of her favorite whiskey.

I hope she does.

After Midnight in Kawasaki

Long ago in what seems like another lifetime, a friend and I ended up missing the last train from Tokyo to Yokohama. Missing the last train to Yokohama was a specialty of mine; having done this twice in one year, I'd spent much of the evening fussing over the likelihood of doing it again. Now, I was beside myself.

We'd tied one on but good, she and I, but I sobered up fast as I watched her study the train schedule.

"Oh no!" wailed Toyoda-san, confirming my worst fears, "we’ve just missed the last train!"

This was the last thing I wanted to hear. I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to say I told you so! Because I had.

Toyoda-san stood there for a few moments, her brow knitted, then nodded. "Right. No problem. I know what we’ll do, come on. We’ll have to walk a ways to the next station, but you’re okay with walking, aren’t you?"

I did my best not to sulk. I reasoned that a brisk walk in the night air would take over where the strong coffee had left off: it would sober us up.

When we got to the next station, there was a train already waiting there. "Come on," yelled Toyoda-san, "we’ve got a minute or two before it leaves but I don’t want to take any chances!"

Neither did I. I broke into a clumsy run, cursing my stupid high heels. Once we were on the train, still panting from the run, I commented that I'd never realized the line we were on went all the way to Yokohama.

Toyoda-san looked guilty. "It doesn’t. Not at this hour anyway."

I turned to stare at her. "What?"

"It only goes as far as Kawasaki at this hour."

Kawasaki is closer to Yokohama than Tokyo, but it is a good, long train trip away. It was all I could do not to shout. "So what are we going to do?"

"Relax! You worry too much, Mary! We’ll be fine. We’re staying with someone I know."

"Who?"

"Somebody perfectly nice – don’t worry!"

"Who? Come on, tell me!"

She smiled. "My obaachan, Mary. My grandma."

"You're kidding!"

Toyoda-san gave me a look. "I'm not."

"Please tell me you're kidding!"

"Relax! It’ll be fine."

I could not believe her. I tried – and failed – to picture showing up on my own grandmother’s doorstep unexpected, unannounced, at midnight, drunk, and hoping to spend the night. With a friend. Someone she’d never met before. Who was a foreigner!

"Toyoda-san, I’ve got just enough money for a taxi back to Yokohama. Why don’t you go to your grandmother’s and I’ll – "

"Forget it, Mary – a taxi’ll cost you a bundle!"

She was right, but even parting with a bundle seemed preferable to showing up at a strange grandmother’s house at midnight, still drunk enough that running in a straight line and staying vertical had been a challenge.

As we walked along the street toward her grandmother’s house, I just knew what was going to happen. We would be met at the door by a grumpy, indignant eighty-year-old in a hairnet and pajamas. Who almost certainly remembered her house being fire-bombed by the Allies during the war -- as it had; I'd heard Toyoda-san's stories. She’d be madder than hell to be dragged out of her bed and find us on her doorstep – of course she would. She’d give us a good bawling out then and there. Toyoda-san would be embarrassed, I would be mortified, and the whole situation would be just horrible.

Toyoda-san acted like it was all a real hoot. "She’ll still be up!" she said breezily. "Just you wait and see. She never sleeps, I swear."

I shivered and tried to make myself look as innocent, respectable and contrite as possible. The door opened a crack. I heard an elderly voice. "Hai, donata dessho ka?" Polite language for Who is that? A good start.

Toyoda-san grinned. "It’s me, obaachan! Akiko! And I’ve got a friend with me. We need to crash!"

The door opened wide, letting out a blast of kerosene-scented heat. "Akiko! And a friend! Lovely!" She looked at me with curious eyes.

"She speaks Japanese, Granny. She’s American – her name’s Mary! We work for the same company."

"Well, don’t stand there, then, come on in, the two of you! You’ll be freezing out there! An American, eh? Ha-ha-ha!"

She held the door open for us, and looked me up and down as though I was the most interesting thing she’d seen in ages. "Nice to meet you," she said rather shyly, given that her dentures were probably in a glass next to her bed. I mumbled the same back.

Toyoda-san’s grandmother was easily eighty. Maybe older. But she moved with the grace and energy of a thirty-year-old. "So come on through! Have you eaten? Are you hungry? Wait – I’ll go and put on some tea."

Toyoda-san elbowed me as we were ushered into the warm, well-lit sitting room. "See? What did I tell you?"

I couldn’t answer her. I could have tripped over my jaw, it had dropped that far.

After a few cups of hot tea, Toyoda-san and I climbed into the warm, fluffy futons that her grandmother had put out for us. We slept a good eight hours each and woke up to the smell of roasted fish, miso shiru and rice. After a decent breakfast and a friendly chat – and many expressions of thanks from me – we left.

On the train back to Yokohoma, Toyoda-san yawned and stretched. "See, Mary, what did I tell you? My granny loves having visitors -- even late at night!"

"You really did tell me. But I couldn’t believe you until I’d seen it with my own eyes."

She laughed. "Not all grandmas are like that!" she agreed. "Especially not in Japan! But my granny’s special."

She was absolutely right.

Decades have past since that late-night visit to Toyoda-san's grandmother. I’ve got my own family now, including a couple of teenagers, and although I try, I often feel that I can never live up to her incredible example of hospitality.

Recently we had a post-midnight visit ourselves from a couple of teenagers, friends of our eldest. They'd been to the local festival and foolishly managed to get locked out of their respective houses. Neither of them dared to wake up their own parents, my daughter told me sheepishly; could they please stay at our house overnight?

Bear in mind, I'm not like Toyoda-san's grandma. I'm grumpy and grouchy and even though I may be an insomniac, I still prize what little sleep I can get around here. But such was the power of Grandma Toyoda's kindness and generosity that even after all these years, I could picture her welcoming face, hear her telling us to come on in and get out of the cold.

"Tell them to come on in," I told my daughter, stifling a yawn. "And ask them if they're hungry."

Miss Personality

Our eldest is what they call an Alpha type. This is a nice way of saying she's a bossy little so-and-so with a penchant for ordering others around.

When I was her age, I was unassertive and all too easily cowed. I would like to think that I was not the type who is easy to influence, but the awful truth is that I was so meek and shy, I probably would have been a follower if anyone had given me half the chance. No one did. I was so timid, insecure and slavishly humble that most of the time no one even knew I was there. I was easily offended and hyper-sensitive, and I might as well have worn a big placard on my back inviting bullies to come and give me grief.

I look at my eldest and am awed by her confidence. I was fully conscious when she was born; I saw them clamp the same bracelet I wore on her wrist and ankle. She looks just like my mother and she has my legs and thick, bushy hair. In short, I know she's mine: no one mixed her up with anyone else's baby. But in personality we are so different that I can only gaze at her in wonder -- and hopeless longing. I wish I'd had half her self-assurance.

When she was a toddler, she led her class at the nursery school, quickly monopolizing attention and making sure that she ran the show. At first, we thought she was merely capitalizing on being the odd man out -- the only Caucasian child in the entire school. But the teachers assured us it wasn't this. "Your child is a natural leader," one of them remarked. "When there's a fire drill, she helps us organize the others." Two years later, another teacher said bemusedly, "Your daughter even bosses us teachers around." I saw her in action once when I had come to collect her. There was a new teacher who was still unfamiliar with the protocol for putting away the bedding after naptime. I caught my daughter imperiously telling this woman exactly how it should be done and I didn't know whether to be proud or ashamed. Frankly, I was a little of both.

When she was four, we worried that she might be bullied, but her teachers laughed this notion to scorn. "She doesn't have much humility, but she's got a tough core," one pointed out. "And she knows how to stand up for herself, so you don't have to worry about that." Although our child's obvious lack of humility was mortifying, my husband and I were greatly reassured.

When she was around six, she suddenly realized that she was a big fish in a small pond. Her class was now old enough to go on field trips and my child quickly learned that although in her own school she reigned as queen, outside of our own neighborhood she was simply a foreigner. This took her down a peg or two and it was heartbreaking to see: when the others came back from field trips they were still happy and excited, whereas my daughter was obviously shell-shocked and reflective. "People cat-called her and pulled her hair," one teacher sadly reported. "And the children from the other schools talked about her in Japanese. They ran away when she tried to talk to them."

The transition from nursery school to elementary school was relatively painless, and during her first year our daughter did well. The fact that she was a head taller than even some of the children a year older didn't faze her in the slightest. On her first day of school, she proudly announced that she was the tallest and strongest girl: she could pick up every boy in her class. Better yet, she crowed, only one of them could pick her up. All I could do was stare at her in wonder. I had been the tallest girl in my class too, and this had mortified me no end. What I had seen as a humiliating affliction, she saw as a natural advantage.

During her second year, things started getting harder. Academically, there was little to worry about. Like most children in Japan, my daughter had learned to read the basic Japanese syllabary in nursery school, and she did well at picking up the more complicated Chinese characters. Socially, though, she was beginning to lose ground. There were other Alpha types, especially among the girls, and they vigorously competed with her for the position of class leader. Moreover, only a few of the children from her nursery school were her classmates, and those who had not known her from babyhood saw her as a foreigner rather than one of the gang. She had her work cut out for her learning to cope with those who bullied her and treated her as different. She became a little withdrawn and less gregarious.

Most of the time she kept all of this to herself. Like a lot of children who grow up in a foreign culture, she identified strongly with her peers and saw her parents as the true foreigners. "Don't say anything," my blonde-haired blue-eyed child used to hiss at me, "Or they'll know you're a foreigner." Gradually, the awful truth dawned: not only were we her parents foreigners, but she was one as well. My husband and I began to worry that she lacked the skills to cope with bullies and the children who shut her out, that her natural confidence and resourcefulness might never recover.

Then one day when I was walking her home from school, she started talking about all of these issues. Clearly she was being tormented by one boy in particular, a bully by the name of Hiroshi, and I was horrified. "He calls me gaijin!" she exclaimed indignantly. "And he claims I look funny!"

Wanting to offer her support and inspiration, I began a long-winded and impassioned story about Dr Martin Luther King, about the children in Arkansas who had been racially taunted and bullied by both children and adults and who'd had to run a gauntlet just to get to school every day. My daughter listened politely, then interrupted. "It's okay, Mom. I know how to take care of Hiroshi!"

Amazed, I stared back at her. "You do?"

She nodded eagerly. "See, no one is supposed to call me gaijin. But I don't want to be a tattle-tale, so I just pretend I can't hear him. That irritates him and he gets louder and louder until he's actually shouting. And then the teachers hear him yelling gaijin and he really gets it." She smiled happily. "He's not all that smart, so he hasn't figured it out yet."

I decided to save my lecture for later. I knew her teacher was right: what my child lacked in humility she more than made up for in confidence. She really didn't need my help at all.