I joined the art club at one of the junior highs in Japan where I worked as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). I had met two girls in the club on my first day there who, when they found out I also loved art, drew me some manga and invited me to join them after school. It was a small group and we sat around laughing and talking as much as we did drawing and painting. But, as one of their English teachers, that was just what I’d wanted – a chance simply to chat (in English) outside the classroom.
When she introduced herself, Yuriya had told me she was half Japanese – her mom was from Singapore and I met her by chance as I left school one day. She had kindly invited me to visit their home and spend a day with them. Things hadn’t been easy for her – after returning to Japan with her husband she’d been widowed and had been bringing up Yuriya and her older brother on her own. Although they didn’t show it, I think things must have been difficult for the kids too – their mom worked very long hours at a factory and, although she spoke Japanese and had been living in Japan for years, she told me she still felt very much a gaijin, an outsider or “alien”. I wondered if Yuriya and her brother had sometimes felt a little like outsiders themselves. But amongst their friends at school they seemed happy and sociable.
This is the drawing that Yuriya gave me on my first day at school – the girl is in a yukata or summer kimono.
These two were drawn by Marina. She was keen to practise her English and I was trying to improve my very limited Japanese so we began mailing each other, switching easily enough between Japanese characters and the Roman alphabet by keitai or cell phone – a really good way to practise reading and writing Japanese, and a fun first for me at the time.
