Japan’s Indelible Mark

Member Marie Kissel explains how a chance trip to Tokyo during college helped form her worldview.

I grew up on a farm in a very small town in southern Indiana. I had never been anywhere, and when I went off to college, to the University of Notre Dame, I joined the marching band in my freshman year.

For many years, Mitsubishi Motors would sponsor an American college football game here in Tokyo and bring over two American college teams. They would do the game each November. Then they announced that Mitsubishi wanted to bring the entire marching band to Tokyo.

Eighteen years old, I get my passport and go to Tokyo. I had no idea what to expect, and I thought it was a really amazing place. This was the ’80s, and definitely Japan was on the rise. We did a parade in Ginza and performed at the football game at Jingu Stadium.

When I went back, I signed up for the year-in-Japan program, and I did my junior year at Ichigaya campus of Sophia University. I decided to do a homestay, and that was great. My host family was living in Yurigaoka [in Kanagawa Prefecture], so I had this long commute each day. It was the ’80s, so it was sardines in a can. I was just excited to do it because I didn’t know if I would have a chance again.

I was much more intrigued with the chance to study outside the US. There were students from other universities, mainly in the US, on the program. It was an hour and a half of Japanese language each day, and I took classes on Japanese history and culture.

My host family wasn’t comfortable speaking English, so that was a challenge. After about three months, [the language] was finally clicking for me and it got a little easier to communicate. I thought a homestay would be a unique experience, and I’d learn how people really lived.

The host father worked for TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power], my host mother stayed at home and I had two host sisters. They really tried to include me in things they were doing for their daughters. We did ikebana lessons, and they had a tea ceremony lady come over.

My host mother was [the home’s] minister of the interior. She was in charge and had the final word. That was a big difference, because for things within the household my impression was women probably had a stronger role than in the States. And part of that was because women traditionally handled the home finances here, which was not the case for my mother’s generation.

My host mother [had been] an extremely good student at Sophia, and she entered a typical job after she graduated. When she got married, she quit, had a family. That’s just how it was. Japan felt like 20, 30 years behind the US at that time.

[That year in Japan] made me really aware that there are a lot of different ways to do things in the world. It was life-changing for me. If you can learn how to thrive in flexible situations, it’s a great skill for anyone to have, even if you never set foot outside your home country again.

As told to INTOUCH’s Nick Jones.

Image: Enrique Balducci