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Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan
Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan
Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan
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Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan

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An American housewife's husband is offered a position in Japan to work on a multinational project. After much soul-searching they accept, and their lives are never the same. From 1994 to 1997, they lived in the countryside in housing specifically designed for Westerners, surrounded with friendly neighbors from The European Union, Canada, Russia Japan and America. Life in Japan was a daily challenge and Pauline had to learn to adjust to Japanese customs. She gingerly maneuvers through complicated rules of Japanese social behavior, never knowing when a simple faux pas would be construed as an intolerable violation of proper conduct. At times, she learns the hard way: wearing the wrong dinner kimono in a Japanese inn, forgetting to put on the proper toilet slippers. Driving on the left side (British style) on narrow, winding roads was a particularly harrowing experience. Grocery shopping for canned or package food and not knowing how to read the labels turns into a guessing game. In spite of these obstacles, life in Japan is rewarding. Eventually Pauline attends night school (Juko/cram school) and learns to ask simple questions and to read signs in Katakana, Japanese characters designed for foreign languages. Japanese living was a challenge, but a close network of Japanese and fellow expatriate friends enabled the Hagers to prevail. The Hagers also travelled to Hokkaido Island, Mt. Fujii, and Nikko Nat’l. Park in Japan, and Hong Kong, Lantau Island, Malaysia, three southern borders cities in China, and lastly to Thailand. The author describes her exciting visits to these exotic countries, including an unnerving ride on an elephant in Thailand and the couple’s visit to a snake farm where poisonous snakes are harbored.
Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan is a fun book to read as well as an informational one. Included inside the book are twenty pictures of various people and places taken by the author.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherPauline Hager
Release dateMay 31, 2011
ISBN9781458095244
Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan
Author

Pauline Hager

A native of Clinton, Massachusetts, a graduate of The University of South Carolina, and a longtime resident of Southern California, Pauline Hager presently lives in La Jolla, California with her husband Randy. Ms. Hager writes from her home and is presently working on her third book. Her first book Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan humorously recounts her two and one half years living among the Japanese, and her second book is a novel Giorgi's Greek Tragedy, an epic tale during the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Turks. The author contributes articles to a monthly e-newsletter www.foxandquill.com/

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    Was a great book about how a typical family lived right in the middle of the real Japanese people. you learn their customs, and a lot out their country. A great book to read. You will feel you are there with the family. Linda Meckler

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Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan - Pauline Hager

Memoirs of an

American Housewife in Japan

Pauline Hager

Revised 2017

Part I

La Jolla, California

January 12, 1994

I remember the above day well. After my husband Randy and I finished our breakfast, he drove off to his work at General Atomics and I rushed to finish my housework. I had an appointment with my dental hygienist to have my teeth examined and cleaned. Then I ran a few errands, had lunch with a friend and later did some food shopping. Upon returning home I decided to sit outside in the patio and relax before preparing dinner

When Randy came home that evening, he approached me with the question, How would you like to go to Japan and live there for two years? At first I thought he was joking, but he assured me it was no joke. At this time he was working as a consulting nuclear engineer at General Atomics on the fusion project ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.) ITER was a joint venture with the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and the European Union. The three work sites were in La Jolla, California, a community of San Diego, Garching, Germany, a suburb of Munich, and Naka, Japan, Ibaraki Prefecture, approximately 75 miles northeast of Tokyo. The ITER engineering activities were increasing in Naka, and they needed another American to fill out the team.

My first reaction was how could I leave my home and our two sons? Chris, our older sons lived in Portland, Oregon at that time. We saw him once or twice a year, but he did call us often. Our younger son Barry was newly wed and preoccupied with his new wife and life. The more I thought about it, if other families move oversea why can't we? Why not; here was an opportunity to travel to the Far East and see that part of the world. After much discussion, it was decided. We would rent our house, hire a property manager, and move to Naka, Japan to work, live and travel!

One evening we invited Bob, one of the American engineers from the Naka site, over for dinner. It was not unusual to have personnel from one site visit other sites. After dinner, we went outside and sat by the pool to have coffee and dessert. Bob got up and walked over to the edge of the deck overlooking the canyon, with the distant city lights glimmering in the warm night air, the surf breaking up against the shore and asked, Do you really want to leave all this? I paused for a moment and then replied, Do we really want to miss this opportunity?

Anyone who has dealt with a government agency knows it takes time for the government to make a decision. Nothing happens overnight. The DOE (Department of Energy) had to approve this assignment, and to make a long story short, from the time Randy told his supervisor early in January 1994, that he would consider working and living in Japan, it was July 21, 1994 before we actually boarded the plane and left for Japan. We had no trouble renting our house, but I must say we did have trouble finding Naka on our map. We finally went to a bookstore and purchased a large-scale map of Japan to locate Naka, Japan.

Before we took our final leave in July, we flew to Japan in June to look at housing and see what was needed, not knowing what was in store for us. JAERI (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute) provided housing at a reasonable, subsidized rent. When we arrived at Narita Airport, JAERI had a taxi waiting for us. An attractive, young, Japanese woman holding up a cardboard sign with our name on it greeted us. She spoke reasonably good English, smiled a lot and bowed repeatedly as she escorted us to our taxi. The taxi took us to our hotel in Mito, which is five miles south of Naka. Naka has no hotels, only love motels. (A word about them later.) Mito is the capital of Ibaraki Prefecture. A prefecture is roughly equivalent to an American state. There are about thirty-three of them on the island of Honshu, the main island in Japan where Tokyo is situated. There are four main islands; the other three are Shikoku and Kyushu, located south of Honshu, and Hokkaido, north of Honshu, next door to the southern part of Russia. Japan has over three-thousand smaller islands, including Okinawa. Most of these islands are uninhabitable.

I didn’t know what to expect, never having visited Japan. Of course I had seen pictures in magazines and travel agencies, but realistically I knew very little about the country. I wasn’t sure what kind of clothes to buy. Did Japanese women still wear kimonos? I had been at a shopping mall in San Diego not long ago, when a group of Japanese women dressed in kimonos, accompanied by several Americans, paraded around the mall. They were probably on a promotional tour of sorts, but that scene got me thinking. Was this standard dress? I wondered. Then my curiosity turned to worry. What about the stores? Do they carry all the items we Westerners are accustomed to buying? Will I be able to find what I need? Did we make the right decision to leave our country? My fears were soon alleviated.

Mito is a hustling, bustling city of over five-hundred thousand people. Its main shopping center is several miles long with a myriad of stores of all kinds, including several fish markets. In front of one particular market, a large fish hung upside-down from a hook. A deep bucket lay underneath the fish to catch the dripping blood. There are donut shops, sushi bars, pastry shops, fast food restaurants, (including McDonald's, among others) drug stores, furniture stores, grocery stores, bookstores, multi-storied department stores, and a host of others. In between the streets are long, narrow alleys. I wrongly assumed these alleys were one-way streets, probably for trash pick-up or deliveries. In fact, two-way traffic squeezed back and forth in these alleys. The first time I drove to Mito with a friend, I closed my eyes, thankful it wasn't my car. Traffic is horrific, with cars coming from every direction, a consequence of three main highway routes that intersect in front of the Mito Railroad Station. Then there is the ever-chirping tweet of the pedestrian walk-don't walk signals that sound like coo-coo birds in a clock store. But after 7:00 o'clock at night, the city looks like the proverbial ghost town. By 9:00 o'clock, you could hear a five yen piece drop on the streets.

Both men and women wear Western-style clothes. As I strolled down the streets of Mito that day, I saw only one woman in a kimono. She looked out of place. I was a little disappointed in not seeing more. I was to learn that kimonos are worn strictly for special occasions, like a wedding, or on holidays such as New Year’s, Children’s Day or Adult Day and other such occasions.

We checked into the Keisei Hotel and were escorted to our room, home for the next ten days. Fortunately, neither my husband nor I are very large people. There was enough room to step inside, close the door, slip into hotel slippers and walk around the bed. A little round table with two chairs often got in my way, so I cleverly rearranged the furniture as best I could so we could maneuver around better. The bathroom was no better. Although compact, it did provide the necessities one finds in Western countries. One thing I did find strange. A sign posted on the wall next to the toilet showed a man standing on the toilet seat, straddling it, and a large, red X mark over it. There was another picture of a man standing in front of the toilet with the seat cover up, and then another picture showing a person sitting on the seat. How strange, I thought, why would they need to show us how to use a toilet? Seven months later I found out why.

We were exhausted from our thirteen hour flight followed by the long drive from the airport to Mito. Even though it was only seventy miles away, it took over two and one-half hours on a two-lane highway to get to the hotel. I slept most of the way. It would have taken another three quarters of an hour if we were going directly into Naka, five miles away. We finally reached our hotel. The hotel did provide an electric pot for boiling water, tea bags (green tea which I grew to love) and some Japanese sweets. That was our dinner. We crawled into bed and slept for over ten hours.

Although this trip was mainly to look over housing, it also gave Randy a chance to meet his new bosses. One was Dutch and the other was Japanese. Since it was Saturday, the worksite was closed and our interpreter/liaison person, Yuko, was not available, we decided to check out the town on our own. We had breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of tea or coffee, eggs any style, toast with butter or jam, and a small vegetable salad. Or, you could have a typical Japanese breakfast consisting of tea, steamed rice, cold pickled vegetables and fish. We opted for Western style. After breakfast we ventured out into the city to pick up a rental car, ordered for us by JAERI. Fortunately, the car rental agency was right around the corner from our hotel. Inside the agency, a young man was sitting at his desk with his feet propped up. He appeared to be dozing, but as soon as we walked inside, he jumped to his feet with a guilty look on his face. He was expecting us and immediately went into action. He scurried from one end of the office to the other getting papers together. I wanted to tell him to take his time, we're in no hurry. I learned that they all conduct themselves in this manner. They are here to serve you. The customer is still supreme in Japan.

We decided to drive into Naka, find the JAERI worksite and look over the town. Randy had no trouble driving the little black Nissan on the left side of the road, since we had been to England several times. Yuko had left a note for us at the hotel, with a small, hand-drawn map showing us how to get to Naka and to JAERI. After looking over the map, Randy decided that since Yuko was a female she wouldn't be expected to know how to arrange a drawing of a map. (Actually it was better than most.) There was no indication of an arrow pointing north or of any other direction. Most maps in newspaper advertisements omit the north arrow. So how does one know in what direction to turn? You don’t. I saw some maps showing the arrow pointing South and labeled North. For a foreigner in Japan, confusion is thy name. Since Japan has no street names, one can only find a place by identifying stores, filling stations, banks, pachinko parlors, or any other obvious landmark. The country was just starting to name some of the main highways and county roads with numbers, which was a tremendous help. We knew we had to find Highway 51 north into Naka and then Highway 349. With some maneuvering around town, we found it. I'm not sure how we knew it was north, but Randy has a great sense of direction. Thank goodness, even the Japanese use Arabic numerals, or we would have spent half of our time driving around Japan looking for the right highway.

We drove by many pachinko parlors, and at the time I had no idea what they were. They looked tacky to me with their gaudy-looking storefronts, artificial flowers hanging from oversized signs and flashing colored lights. I puzzled over the number of these establishments until I learned they were gambling casinos. Looking in from the outside, I noticed a long room with pinball machines lined up and down the aisles. If you win, the prizes are insignificant, considering the long hours and money spent playing these machines. Some prizes can be converted to cash. I was told that originally these old parlors were owned by the North Koreans. The Japanese felt they were above owning this kind of enterprise outright. Supposedly, the profits went to help the North Korean economy. I was later told that when the Japanese realized how much profit came from these places, they decided to take them over. The Japan Times (an English language newspaper) had a series of articles exposing the seedy side of these casinos. One story claimed that many housewives go there and gamble away the house money. Most Japanese men turn over their weekly paychecks to their wives. Twice a year, the companies hand out bonuses. Normally, the bonus money is considerably more than the paycheck. The men keep their bonus check for themselves. I later read that one hot summer day, a mother left her young child locked in the car for several hours, with all the windows rolled up, while she went inside the casino to play the machines. When she returned to the car, the child was dead, suffocated from the high heat inside the car.

Naka, Japan

We found our way into Naka. I was a little excited knowing I would be living here for at least two years. Naka was a small town at one time, but had recently incorporated with two other towns, with a total population of about 45,000 people. Somehow I had expected a picturesque little city with a charming city hall surrounded by Cherry trees and manicured rock gardens in the town center. The reality was entirely different. The main street consists of rows of small shops, one big supermarket (Jusco,) filling stations, pachinko parlors, karaoke bars, stone masonry shops for cemeteries, outdoor vegetable stands and a host of other small enterprises. On the corner of each block were small plots of land with vegetables growing right alongside the road. Occasionally you would see a small narrow road coming out from nowhere. Fortunately, there were traffic lights that made it easier to turn into or out of these streets, as these were the roads that led to our neighborhood.

Since we had no idea where our neighborhood was located, we drove straight to the ITER site. That is, we attempted to. Yuko's map showed an appliance store across the road just before turning off to get to JAERI road. Unfortunately for us, the store was closed and the shades were drawn, so we drove right by it. There was a sign on the store front, but of course we couldn’t read it. We knew we had gone too far when we passed under the Joban Expressway, similar to our California freeways, only these expressways are not free. They are expensive to drive on, about ten cents a kilometer. There are only two lanes in each direction. One lane is for passing only. Not quite like our four and five lane freeways in California. So we turned around and tried again. After a few rounds back and forth, we finally saw a small sign in Romangi that read JAERI and a small arrow pointing east.

The road leading to the site was glorious. It was only two lanes but the road was WIDE. Fields of rice paddies were on both sides of the street, as well as other growing vegetables farther along. As soon as we passed the site and continued on, the road narrowed and terminated at a set of traffic lights. This T in the road was National Highway 6. This meant back to heavy traffic, a narrow, two lane road and huge, single chassis trucks, one right after the other, barreling down the highway. Oh, how I loathed driving on this road. Often I would be driving in my little Mazda wedged in between two monstrous trucks. Any minute I felt like they were going to crush me and not even know I was there. I would be a grease spot on the road. I made every effort to avoid this highway. I later discovered a better rout to a friend’s house. Naka was a big disappointment. I was not getting good vibes from this town.

Japanese Meal

That evening we ate in the hotel restaurant. There were three restaurants, one Chinese, Japanese, and the coffee shop, where we usually had breakfast. Since we were in Japan we thought we should eat Japanese food. We walked into the restaurant and were escorted to a table. We stepped up to a bench, seated across from each other, around a small table. Our legs hung from the bench into a small opening under the table. We were handed a menu. English is the second language in Japan, but not a word in English appeared on the menu. No one in the restaurant spoke English. We were told later that many Japanese do, but are too shy to pronounce the words. It's easier to communicate in writing, since they often read and write English better than they speak it.

We had no idea what to order, so we just pointed at words. That was a mistake. We unknowingly ordered enough food for a banquet. We each ordered a beer, not realizing that their beer bottles are three quarters of a liter. When we asked for another bottle and pantomimed that we wanted to share it, the waitress still brought us a bottle each. I had been to a few Japanese restaurants in San Francisco, but somehow this food was not like San Francisco. I am a firm believer in eating everything on my dish, but I have to admit, neither of us could that night, and not because of the amount of food. In Japan, a variety of food is served in small dishes, maybe two inches in diameter. We gingerly ate a little from each dish, but some were so strange looking, it literally took our appetite away. There was one dish that resembled large, yellow-green, bird droppings. That one we didn't touch. Fortunately, we inadvertently ordered shrimp tempura and gobbled that up. I was having trouble eating with chopsticks. I had not as yet mastered the art of fingering chopsticks. At one point, I got so flustered that I stuck one end of the chopstick into the food to pick it up. You don't do that in public. The woman across the table from us saw what I did and burst out laughing. Defeated, I was forced to ask for a fork. They didn't have one in the restaurant. Someone had to go next door to borrow one from the Chinese restaurant. We finished eating most of the food. With a belly full of food and with all the beer we drank, we were quite content, until we got the bill. It came to over $100.00 a person. Luckily we were on an expense account.

Filling stations

The following day, Sunday, we decided to take a long drive and see the country. We had bought a map of Japan in San Diego. Looking at the map, we saw that National Highway Route 6 traveled mostly along the coast, and a direct route north to Sendai. That promised to be a pretty drive. Sendai was written in large black letters so we knew it had to be a large city. Sendai is a seaport city that was heavily bombed during World War II. Like all Japanese cities that were bombed, they have been rebuilt and are now quite modern, with tall buildings, wide streets and modern shopping malls. But we were not to see Sendai until three years later. We got into our car and saw we needed fuel. Fuel is very expensive in Japan, anywhere from three and one half to four dollars per gallon in American money. Filling stations are everywhere, since there are so many cars. We pulled up into a large, modern station and sat there thinking something was missing. There were no pumps. Suddenly a group of five or six young people rushed over to our car, like a whirl-wind of fallen leaves on an autumn New England day. Each person busied himself /herself washing the windows, checking under the hood, emptying the ash tray, checking the tires, and then someone pulled the hose down from overhead to fill up the tank. Upon completion, one of the attendants directed us out into the heavy traffic, while the rest all lined up and bowed to us as we drove away. This service was standard procedure. I loved it. With a tank full of gas, we were off to Sendai.

We didn't know how lucky we were to get fuel that day. One of our friends told us the first time they stopped to get fuel, they were unsuccessful. They pulled up to the pump and waited to be served. The attendants rushed over to do their thing. One of the attendants began speaking to them in Japanese, motioning to them about something. They didn't know what he wanted. At first they thought maybe they had to pay first, so they tried to give him money. That didn't do it. They decided maybe they only took credit cards and offered their credit card. That didn't work either. Then John got out of the car, pointed to the gas tank and motioned to fill it up. No good. Confused, they drove off. John checked with other Western friends and no one could offer an explanation. They came back the next day and tried again. Finally one of the young men opened the door on the driver's side and pointed to a lever that unlocked the gas tank. It hadn't occurred to none of the attendants to do that the previous day.

Onward to Sendai

According to the map, Sendai looked to be approximately one-hundred thirty miles north of Mito. That seemed like it would be an easy drive up the coast and back or so we thought. So we drove and drove. It was June, it was Sunday, the sun was out, and it seemed that every person in Japan was in his car driving on National Highway Route 6. The cars were bumper to bumper. The traffic crept from town to town with no break in between. It was a constant line of cars, similar to traffic on a crowded California freeway on a hot, summer day with people driving to the beach. I wondered how anyone could turn across the traffic in the road. There was no room for cars to back up to let someone through. The small towns all looked alike with their ugly store fronts, pachinko parlors, filling stations, karaoke bars, massive billboards and fluttering advertising flags. Some roads had small dividers with planted bushes, but a few yards in between these bushes were tall, unsightly, ferrous concrete lamp posts and wires hanging overhead. Not a pretty sight. At the risk of hurting the feelings of my Japanese friends, I must say that most of Japan is not the beautiful country depicted on calendars or travel posters. Those pictures show beautiful temples with cherry trees in full blossom, Japanese red maple or Chinese elms trees, and fastidiously raked, dry rock gardens. They show museum grounds with intricately trimmed bonsai trees, huge granite rocks and koi fish ponds, or sprawling public gardens with a myriad of beautiful flowers, trees, stone lanterns and small foot bridges crossing over streams. These places do exist, and I had assumed all of Japan looks like that. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Sights of the Countryside

There is little residential zoning in the country. It's not unusual to see a large walled-in home with a driveway lined with flowers, (most likely a family compound consisting of several generations) next door to a shack with chickens or roosters running about. Most Japanese sleep on futons. Their upper decks all face east to the morning sun. From the balcony railing, they hang their bedding to air. One morning I went to a meeting in Mito. The sun had been shining, but suddenly the sky turned gray and threatening. It began sprinkling rain. One woman jumped up and excused herself, explaining she had to go home. She left her bedding out to air and had to bring it back into the house. Few have clothes dryers, so all the wash hangs out.

As we drove along the highway, rows of grimy, concrete apartment blocks appeared. Balcony railings were draped with bed clothing and clothes drying on clotheslines, fluttering in the breeze like flag signals on a battleship. The telephone poles are made of ferrous concrete, practical but not very attractive. They match the apartment buildings. Billboards are everywhere. You even find them in so-called residential areas. The ubiquitous vending machines consisting of soft drinks, juice and coffee are on every street corner, as well as beer vending machines and cigarette machines. I read in the paper that beer from a machine is becoming a thing of the past, due to so many inebriated workers and teenagers. At night, these machines glow in the dark like a beacon for lost foreign drivers (like myself) looking for landmarks. There was one on the corner three blocks from my house.

The architecture of the buildings has no aesthetic appeal. They are either tall and narrow or wide and rectangular and are mostly made of concrete. They have no fancy trimming on them. Some buildings are painted in garish yellow, green or purple. A few are painted in what I call Pepto Bismol pink. The most hideous sight of all are the discarded washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, bicycles and other appliances and furniture sitting along the roadside. There are few dumps or recycling centers for people to take their discards, so they just leave them sitting wherever. At one time, there was a dump next to a filling station, not too far from where we lived. One could drop off junk there, but it was later closed down. There is regular trash pickup twice a week, but that is for everyday household garbage (gomi.) The Japanese don't like to buy used clothing or furniture, and there is no such institution as a Salvation Army or a Goodwill store. By the time I left, I did hear of places that were opening up second-hand stores.

The saddest sight to me, living in Southern California with pristine beaches, was the Japanese seashore. Sitting in the sand are tons of appliances and trash of all sorts. Since every piece of land is used for planting rice or for growing vegetables, people have no choice but to leave their discards on the beaches. That isn't to say there are no clean beaches. You just have to know where they are. I had heard talk that the trash is being collected and shipped to one of their obscure islands for burial there. Since Japan has thousands of small, uninhabited islands, that doesn't sound like a bad idea.

Hitachi, Japan

We finally reached a city that looked fairly large and somewhat modern. We thought surely this must be

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