Interviewing Mamas

I needed some more material for the exhibition, so I killed two birds with one stone by interviewing my host mum and practicing with the video camera at the same time. It's my first time filming anything, so I was all worried and paranoid, but once it started up, it was cool. I just had it up on a tripod anyways.

My host mum is incredibly straightforward and open about everything. I didn't really feel like any question I could possibly ask her would be uncomfortable for her. So we just chatted. She has a lot of interesting things to say, and most of all, she's comfortable with just talking. I noticed this more later when I was trying to talk to the ladies in the English class. I suppose it's also a language barrier thing, since they have to try to speak in a foreign language, but last class, when we were talking about manga, everyone was talking over everyone else. They all had something to say. This time, it was rather hesitant.

I suppose it also has to do with the people who ended up coming. We were missing Te-chan and Takeda-san. Te-chan, once she interested in something, has a lot to say about it. Takeda-san is amazingly good at understanding things in context so she makes a really good conversant when the rest of the group has stopped with question marks popping around their heads.

They apparently had some sort of falling out, though, Takeda-san and everyone else. Te-chan was just busy that day, I think. She came to the next class.

One of the most interesting things I find among this group of women is how sensitive they are to everyone else's feelings. This entire group of women spent weeks discussing in person or talking on the phone and trying this and that and even holding meetings about how to tell Takeda-san that she wasn't wanted anymore. I think Takeda-san had a somewhat difficult personality and it was disrupting the group. In any case, for a couple of weeks, my host mum was constantly on the phone for hours, talking about this and that. In the end, they even tried direct confrontation, but I don't think that worked. Takeda-san just got mad at my host mum and stopped coming to English class.

Well, I don't really know how it all ended, but the hubbub is over and I haven't seen Takeda-san since the first time I met her.

Everyone always talks about how the Japanese ostracize people that are different and how unfeeling they can be, but among these women, I found a real, deep emotion over something as simple as not hurting another's feelings. Maybe it's because they are mothers, but when confronted with the choice of the group over the individual, they still don't want to hurt the individual. What might be somewhat distasteful for the American who is reading this might be the fact that the group was chosen over the individual. Or maybe all Westerners would feel that way. But it is simply a different way of thinking, and I have come to appreciate it even if I don't always agree.

After all, it is this way of thinking that allows them to so genuinely worry and care for a complete stranger who has come to stay among them for three months and then, perhaps, to wander away again and never come home again. I don't think I've ever felt more taken care of than while I stayed here, where my host mum will call every 3.5 minutes until I pick up when she's worried whether I'll catch my bus to Kyoto, where my host grandmum will come home from Sea World with a little present and an embarrassed smile for me, where my little host sister imitates my way of talking and her older sister patiently explains a word in Japanese that I didn't understand, and where my host grandpa starts crying when he thinks about me leaving for the States.