I studied kanji with the 6th graders in Junko Uchida's after school program upstairs at Nakagawa yesterday. Junko is 4 months pregnant, but you can't tell at all. She still looks great.
Junko and I chatted in French while the kids gave me cheese and melon popsicles and helped me read the kanji in my workbook. I told Junko about "Deux Milles Ans de l'Histoire", the French history podcast I've been listening to to keep up with French lately. She recommended a news program she used to listen to when she lived at her mother's house, said she'd send me the link.
After the kids left, we looked at student art work together. Drawings and colored-paper cutouts of animals.
"Des escargots." I asked Junko if she ate snails when she lived in France. She wrinkled her nose-- "Jamais!" Japanese people think snails are disgusting. I told her that Japanese eat lots of sea-creatures that Westerners find gross- Octopus suction-cups; Squid tentacles; Tuna eyeballs; Whale; seaweed; little sardines in salad, eaten head, guts and all. Yes, she said, but those are fish.
Frogs. A page of grinning green ones. I asked if Junko ever tried frogs' legs. ("Kaeru no ashi o taberukoto ga arimasu ka?"). She shook her head but said "C'est comme les poulet?" (Tastes like chicken?). I told her frogs' legs were my grandpa Greeley's favorite food. He used to gig and cook them on the grill in Chapman, with the French chef forestry student who stayed near the Chapman sawmill for a few months before deciding to learn cooking instead of forestry. ( used to scandalize the little old ladies of Chapmanby coming home with women, or staying out all night).
Junko mentioned how many frogs are in Yakage during the rainy season (June-July, now). I told her about the one I found in my house last night, and the choruses at night on my bike rides home.
Junko told me about her past. Her parents divorced when she was 3, in 1978, a time when divorce was uncommon in Japan. Junko was named for an ex- girlfriend of her father's, her mother told her years later. (Junko matter of factly told Claire and me this when we asked about her name in the car, as Eichi drove us back to Ibara station after lunch at their house one Sunday. An EX girlfriend!). So Junko grew up an "Oba-ko", "Grandma's girl", while her mother was at work. Her mother lived in Yakage, where she had been her entire life. She hardly ever left Okayama prefecture, let alone Japan.
But Junko always wanted to explore. She went to college in Osaka, where she lived with a cousin who was three years older, so her mother didn't worry about her. Ever since shougakko, Junko had always been a hardworking student, eager to get out of rural Japan and learn more, but very shy.
In Osaka, Junko says she learned to be with people. She had to work jobs to pay for school-- restaurants, clothing retail-- and through them she learned to interact, not to be shy or intimidated from speaking.
She studied French. In highschool, Junko had become fairly competent in English, but enchanted by the glamor of Paris art, lit and fashion, in college she took up French in earnest. Her dream was to study fashion design in Paris, eventually to emigrate there and work in the global fashion business.
Junko has always been beautiful. She's shown me grainy old photos from Paris of her with her friends-- in front of the Eiffel tower, at the Musee D'Orsay, up high, with the rooftops of Montparnasse and the Seine below, in the shadow of Notre Dame with a Japanese girl friend; on a red couch between a young French guy and his British girlfriend, looking straight at the camera. In the photos and in person today, Junko has a subtle elegance-- a quiet, mysterious beauty. Dark eyes and hair, calm earthy style, simple cosmopolitan taste in clothes. Scarves, skirts, blouses with low necklines. There's something both Japanese and Parisian about her- subtle, but not invisible and self-effacing like so many Japanese women. She's confident, assertive even, always looking people in the eye. "Fearless", as I've heard people described who have lived overseas.
Junko's dream was to move to Paris and start a career in fashion: Travel all over the world, perfect her French and English. Then she met Eichi, and the plan changed.
Now Junko is 33 years old, 5 months pregnant with their first baby. I've seen its head, ears, nose, toes, testicles inside Junko's body, on Ultrasound videos over sushi dinner at their house. Junko's body doesn't show it at 5 months. She bought a chic new wardrobe of maternity clothes just as stylish as her others-- sky-blue skirt, black bloues, V-neck. Her eyes, her clothes, her personality don't seem domestic or settled or complacent. She still studies French, listens to podcasts from Paris, invites the foreign teachers over for lunch to get a workout in English, teach us kanji, and learn more about life abroad. She reads novels. She volunteers at the Ibara Japanese class for foreigners, along with my 33 year old denim-weaver friend Yuki-- and meets lots of international young foreigners from Brazil, Indonesia, China, America, England. Once in a while even France.
