I spent this past weekend in Ota City, Gunma, with my new Brazilian friend Ana Cecilia and her family: her Peruvian husband and model-beautiful-but-still-kind-of-whiny 12-year old twin girls. It was such a breath of fresh air to be around Latin Americans again, chattering away in Spanish and eating delicious South American cooking! I had met Ana and her friend Emy at the DMV a few weeks ago and exchanged phone numbers with the promise to keep in touch. Finally we decided to meet on Saturday at Kumagaya Station in Saitama, 50 kilometers east of Takasaki and a 20-minute drive from their house.
When they came to pick me up, the first thing that struck me was that Ana and her daughters were all wearing spaghetti-strapped tops! In this country of super-short skirts but always-covered shoulders, seeing bare arms was a shock. It was just like being back in America! I know that’s a weird thing to say, but it was nice to see them so very comfortable and free in this hot weather. I have succumbed to Japanese modesty and keep all my tank tops in my dresser drawer.
As soon as I got in the car and we all had made our introductions, I was immediately peppered with questions about my life in Japan, my life in America, what I wanted to do while I was in Ota. Everyone kept interrupting and talking loudly over each other and there were a lot of light-hearted insults thrown around. Ana’s husband, Augusto, prefaced most of his questions with, “Now this is something I read on the Internet, and I’ve always wanted to ask a real American about this . . . “ before throwing out statistics about American foreign policy, President Obama, World War II, UFOs and Area 51, or the upcoming end of the world in 2012. It was a whirlwind of conversation before we even crossed the bridge back into Gunma (about a mile away). Oh, it was fun! To be surrounded by the sweet, spicy sounds of South American Spanish, like music to my ears! And I understood every word! After months of barely scraping by with Japanese, it was so NICE to be able to carry on a conversation in another foreign language I can actually speak.
Our first stop was at a huge Brazilian shopping center/restaurant in Ota. It was about half the size of Target and filled with all kinds of things, from soap and t-shirts to whole roasted chickens and fruit. The restaurant was connected to the store, its menu hand-painted on a wooden sign in Portuguese. I felt exactly as if I had walked into La Vaca Ramona in Greensboro, except this time I was the outsider among outsiders, the American girl in the Brazilian community in Japan! But it was such a familiar feeling: I’m so used to being stared at when I go to traditional Mexican places in North Carolina. I smiled politely at the Brazilian folk sitting there, and looked around at all the new and interesting products, slightly familiar but still different.
There was a quick discussion about if we should eat there or somewhere else, and somewhere else won. We had lunch at a buffet-style Brazilian place called La Primavera a few blocks away. I had just eaten a little while ago so I couldn’t finish my plate, but I did enjoy the slices of roast beef (?), salad, white lasagna, rice and beans, and soup . . . and the continuing fun conversations about conspiracy theories and aliens.
The girls wanted to go to Aeon Mall after eating, so Ana and I sat in an open area talking while her husband and kids entertained themselves in the game arcade. We got home around 8:00 and rested for a bit before heading over to see Emy and her family a few blocks away. Just us girls went, leaving Augusto at home.
Up until then, I had been doing pretty well conversationally with the Spanish, but Emy and her husband, both from the middle of Brazil, barely speak it at all, even though they understand most of it. So I sat on the couch in their very nice upper-middle class house, listening to the swirls of Portuguese on one side as the adults talked, and the Japanese/Portuguese mix of Ana and Emy’s kids on the other side, and thought: Wow, I don’t know what’s going on. Once in a while Ana would look up and translate back into Spanish for me, but after a while I just gave up listening. There was a kid’s keyboard in the corner, so I entertained the kids (an 11-year old girl and a 5-year old boy) with “The Entertainer,” “The Nickelodeon” (is that its name?) and “Beach Ball Boogie,” that I drug out from somewhere in the far reaches of my memories and which reminded me of my brother back in 1994.
It’s amazing how similar the immigrant experience is all over the world. Back in the States, my Mexican and Central American clients would complain that their kids only speak in English and can’t think Spanish anymore; here on the other side of the world, Emy and Ana complain that their kids just speak in Japanese. It makes sense, since they spend all day in Japanese schools and have Japanese friends, but I’m sure there’s always that cultural identity balance they’re trying to achieve in school and at home. I wonder if there are the same statistics on Brazilian kids in Japan like there are on Mexican kids in America. I wonder if life is just as hard.
In any case, Ana’s kids are pretty bright to speak fluent Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese, just like Emy’s kids speak Portuguese and Japanese. And if I keep hanging out with everyone, I’m going to have to learn a little português myself! They understand me when I respond in Spanish, but I only get about 70% of what they’re saying, and half of that is through body language. Alejandro and Emy's 5-year old son fell in love with me as the night progressed, and he kept chattering to me half in Portuguese and half in Japanese, with me understanding about every 20th word. After a while I just gave up and said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, oh, that’s great!” in English because I wasn’t sure what else to do.
At 10:00 p.m., the eight of us—4 adults and 4 kids—piled into Emy’s husband Alejandro’s car and drove to McDonald’s for dinner. The people behind the counter were all Japanese, but besides us, half a dozen white and dark Brazilians were in the restaurant as well.
We got back to Emy and Alejandro’s at 11:00. Over the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had (my first Brazilian coffee?) we chattered on about languages, traveling, make-up, Avon, snakes in the Amazon, and how the Vietnamese eat spider legs. (No joke.) Alejandro could carry on a conversation in mixed-Spanish, so we could understand each other. Emy just speaks Portuguese so poor Ana had to translate a lot. It was still a really fun night, though!
I was absolutely exhausted and just wanted to go to bed as soon as we got home around 12:30, but the girls had rented a scary movie and wanted to watch that. So I crawled into bed with one of them beside me and the other on a mattress on the floor, and tried to sleep while they enjoyed their film (I'm not sure which one it was; I put earplugs in). I still hadn’t gone to sleep when it finished around 2:30 a.m., but I did manage to drift off for a little bit off and on until 9:45. Sleeping was almost impossible, though, because Shiori kept kicking me and shoving me to the other side of the bed in her sleep all night. This is what I get for doing the same thing when I was 12.
The morning was better, though: while the girls slept, Ana and I sat at the kitchen table in our t-shirt pajamas, sipping coffee and eating bread and eggs, our feet propped up under the table, completely at ease. It was relaxing.
Augusto came back from church around 12:30 (sorry, I was asleep when he left). The girls had woken up by then, and wanted to eat. We went first to Augusto’s mom’s shop, a little trailer-like thing that sells authentic Peruvian food. I bought camote (sweet potato) chips and banana chips, which I devoured that same day. Then we went to a restaurant for pollo a la brasa. It was just like being back in a Latina American place back in America, sitting on that bench in that tiny restaurant/store. We ordered a whole roasted chicken, salad, French fries, ceviche, and Inca Cola to drink. I kept marveling over the fact that I can sit in a Peruvian restaurant with South American friends in Japan! It’s so wonderful! Yay, diversity!
They dropped me off at the station after lunch, and I was back in my apartment by 6:00. Ota is kind of a dull little town; I can see it doesn’t have great big attractions or anything. But it does have bilingual signs everywhere, and people in all shades of colors who speak different languages. It’s a nice break from the homogeneity of my daily life. It was really lovely for me to visit, because I felt, just for a little bit, like I was back at home.
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